I should have listened to Pat.
No, it went further than that. I had fucked this up from the start. From the very day I landed in America. And now I was going to die.
At least it would be my just desserts. The punishment for such incompetence should be death. I took another breath.
“Lost him,” one man yelled.
“No, over there somewhere,” another replied.
“I’ll go around,” said the first.
Trapped, but I would try for it. The least I could do. I got up, I staggered on. Impossible. Shambling. Ahead of me somewhere in the pitch black were steps that led to the back entrance to the cemetery, the closed gate, the wire fence. Twenty or thirty wide-spaced cuts into the side of the hill, filled with pounded stone, leveled. I could have run them in thirty seconds on a good day. Now, at night, in the middle of a storm, with a shoulder wound, a leg wound, and with at least three gunmen less than the length of a basketball court away and zeroing in on me, it would be a bloody epic. Three men, one armed with a shotgun and the others using bloody automatic rifles.
I made it up about three steps, slipped on the dirt, fell. Tumbled down the hill, slewing in the mud. My head hit the side of a cast-iron litter bin. Sickening pain, a big cut above my ear. The shotgun tore up the air to my left.
“There he is,” someone yelled.
I slithered behind a stand of trees. I couldn’t see them but somehow they could see me. Maybe they had night scopes. Or, more likely, maybe they just knew there was nowhere else I could be. I gasped for air, panicked, waited for the big hit.
The rain a knife blade. My scalp on fire. My knee screamed, my chest gurgled, the wind blew down. I threw up in my mouth. Junk sick.
I saw a storage shed for lawnmowers. I crawled behind it. Safe for a few seconds. I took a deep breath. Calmed myself. Options. I wasn’t dead yet. I had the dark. I had a gun of my own. And the rain so thick it was nearly impossible to see. The boys would have to come close to administer the coup de grâce.
I did a quick triage. I’d been hit in the chest, but the vest had protected me.
The shoulder wound was a ricochet off the Kevlar. I felt around, it wasn’t serious. I was bleeding, but no major blood vessel had been punctured and it hurt like hell — a good sign. The shotgun pellet in the leg wouldn’t kill me. I put my finger through my soaked jeans to the skin. A lot of blood, but I could wiggle my toes. My tendons and nerves were ok. All that shooting and I’d really only been fucking grazed.
More shots, yells of organization: “Where’d he go? Where’s that fucking light? Who had the light?”
Only male voices. Amber, of course, was well out of this. Back at the car. Gone. Already left town. I took out the.45. Blacked out for a second. Where was I? I was in the middle of a graveyard. Shooters above and to the side of me. Three points of a triangle and I was at the center. They were good. Pat had been right. I was an idiot, an amateur dealing with professionals. It made no sense, Amber, why would you hire three more potential blackmailers? Goddamnit, it made no sense. Forget it. Had to get out. If I could make it to the fence on the far left of the cemetery. About fifty yards. Could I walk it? I’d have to crawl. Ok. Ignore the pain. Let’s go.
Caked with filth, I slithered my way over graves, cleaning the vomit out of my nostrils, sliding carefully along the ground.
Suddenly someone shouted triumphantly: “There he is.”
They turned a dazzling portable spotlight on me. One of those with thousands of candlepower.
And I knew if I didn’t move I was a dead man.
An M16 threw fire at me from the trees. I struggled to my feet and ran for the fence, ignoring the pain from the pellet above my knee. The rain made it difficult to see, to get purchase on the ground. I slipped and fell between the pillars of a massive tomb. Bullets smashed into the marble, sending chips everywhere. I ran for the fence, dodging between graves, taking cover between granite tombstones. Shots and fire overhead. A man in front of me. I was heading straight for him. His back to me, a big dark shape in the night and rain.
An automatic rifle churned up the mud ahead of me, smacking into granite, tracer bouncing everywhere, like fireworks.
“Frank, stop shooting, you’re going to hit fucking Manny, Frank, cut it out,” a voice yelled.
I ran toward the man.
“Jesus, Frank, didn’t you fucking hear me? Stop shooting.”
The M16 abruptly stopped.
“Manny, Manny, he’s over there, he’s right there.”
The voice was yelling desperately, behind me and over to my left. The big light came full on me again.
“There he is, Manny, turn around.” Another voice.
“Where?”
“Manny, he’s right there, at that big cross behind you.”
Manny, in front of me, turned at last when we were fifteen feet apart. White guy with a beard and a flat cap. Soaked through. Probably waiting here for hours. He began raising his shotgun. He hadn’t kept it leveled because he hadn’t wanted water to get into the barrels.
That’s what killed him.
I straightened my weapon, pulled the trigger. Pat’s big Colt banged. Flame from the heavy barrel. I’d cleaned it, but this weapon hadn’t been fired in combat since the Battle of the Ardennes. I screamed, charged him. Ran into the dark, shooting. Half a clip. Like an insane man. Blinding flashes from the.45. When my eyes cleared, no sign of Manny, he was down.
Yellow fire all around me from the M16s. The Fourth of July and Guy Fawkes night and a riot drill and every other nightmare rolled into one.
I could see gravity in the parabola of the tracer. The bullets smacking into the wire fence around the cemetery. Ringing off the concrete walls, bouncing a thousand feet into the air.
I ran like a shit-kicker now. I sprinted to the cemetery fence. I needed both hands, so I dropped the.45. I climbed over the five-foot wire mesh, fell to the ground, scrambled across the car park on the other side.
More tracer, more bullets. M16s in the middle of the town. But this was Fort Morgan after midnight, during a thunderstorm. Empty.
I kept running. The car park was well lit up. They found me easily in the lights and shot at me but the shots were wild, they rang and screamed off the railings, and the shooters didn’t focus them properly. They were excited, not taking their time.
I saw a Volkswagen camper van parked on an overlook near the river.
I yelled. “Help, is there anyone there? Help.”
I ran to the van and banged on the window. Bullets slammed into the side of the vehicle, puncturing tires and windows. Glass and metal shards smacking into me. A bullet careened off the Kevlar vest, knocking me to my knees.
“Fucker,” one of the men screamed behind me.
I got up and turned to see two men climbing over the cemetery fence. They had shoulder-strapped their rifles. Bearing down. Big men. White guys. Heavy, but tough. Where had they come from? All the trouble they took to silence a simple blackmailer in Denver, and Charles somehow hires three professional killers to shoot me?
I ran past the sugar factory, the Walgreen’s, a video store. The shops all closed. The street deserted.
“Come back, you fucker,” they yelled, shooting pistols now.
A bullet clanged into a stop sign. I ran on, wounded, slowing as they gained.
Only one thing for it now.
Only one way out. The river. I cut across the deserted I-76.
I sprinted to the end of a lane and vaulted over the safety railing that led to the embankment over the South Platte. I stole a final look back. They were still shooting at me as they ran.
I took a breath, jumped.
A moment in the river-cooled air.