''I don't think you're too bad. Get to a hospital, and you won't die.''
''Kiss my ass,'' LaChaise groaned. ''Wipe it up or something.''
''On the other hand,'' she said, looking at the one wound that was bleeding,
''you've got a bullet hole in the back of your arm.'' She rolled his arm, and found a lump under the skin near the front. ''And that's the bullet, I think.''
''Cut it out,'' LaChaise said.
''It's pretty deep.''
''I don't give a fuck, cut it out.''
''Dick, I'd just hurt you worse.''
''All right, all right…''
Martin stretched out on the floor and lay silent and motionless as she poured a glass of water over the wound, probed at it, shook her head and said, ''All I can do is put some more pads over it and bind it up. You need a doctor. You're going to get infected.''
Martin's stomach heaved and she realized he was laughing: hysterical, she thought. Then again, maybe he thought it was funny. ''Infection'll take a couple days. We ain't got a couple days.'' He looked at LaChaise. ''We gotta keep moving, boy.''
''I'm really fuckin' hurtin', man.''
''They'll wonder where we went, and sooner or later, they'll kick their way in here. If we're gonna do any moredamage, we gotta move.'' He looked at the windows. ''Before light.''
LaChaise groaned, but got to his hands and knees, looked sideways at Sandy and said, ''Tape me up where you can.''
''I don't have that much tape.''
''Well, get the worst ones,'' he said. To Martin: ''That fuckin' shotgun.
Somebody had a fuckin' shotgun and he had me dead, but that first shot missed.
That fuckin' glass was like a hurricane… Second shot hit me in the vest.''
Sandy said, ''I'll get a towel.''
As she ran back to the bathroom LaChaise crawled across the floor to the bulletproof vest he'd taken off. A ragged pattern of pellet holes punctured the nylon back panel. ''
Probably shooting triple-ought,'' he said. ''Christ, if he'd been a little worse shot and a little high, I wouldn't have a head.''
Martin was on the phone, dialing.
''Surgery, please… Thanks.'' Then, after a moment, ''This is Chief
Davenport, is my wife Weather there?'' He listened as LaChaise watched, then said, ''No, that's okay. Tell her to call when she gets done, okay?''
''She's not his fuckin' wife,'' LaChaise said, when Martin hung up. ''Was she there?''
''She's scrubbing for surgery.''
''That's where we're going, then,'' LaChaise said. ''That motherfucker Davenport set the whole thing up. I wouldn't be surprised if that was him up in the hallway. Jesus, that was something…''
SANDY CAME BACK FROM THE BATHROOM, AND OVERHEARD the last part of the conversation. ''Where're you going?''
''Hospital where Davenport's old lady works,'' LaChaise said.
''You gonna let me go?''
''Something like that,'' LaChaise said, and he grinned at her. Her heart lurched: they were going to kill her.
''Turn over,'' she said. She dabbed his back with the wet towel, cleaning him up as best she could, isolating the biggest cuts, pulling a few pieces of glass out of his back and legs. ''I can't patch the ones under your hair,'' she said.
''Just get the rest.''
Martin had slid over to his travel bag, got a pair of camo jeans out, and pulled them on as he sat on the floor. ''We wait an hour, and then we head out: if we go right straight across to Washington Avenue…''
''Around that curve and down that ramp and across the bridge and the hospital's right there,'' LaChaise finished, remembering the recon.
''Five minutes from here,'' Martin said. He pulled on his boots and looked at
Sandy. ''You about done with him?''
''About as much as I can do,'' Sandy said.
''We could use some coffee and eggs,'' Martin said. He found the TV remote and clicked it on. An announcer was barking something into the screen, and he fumbled a minute to get the sound up. ''… just a few minutes ago. They have been positively identified as…''
''I better get the rifles, in case they show up,'' LaChaise said. He stood carefully, groaned and started down the hall. ''Coffee and eggs,'' he said to
Sandy. ''Toast.''
Sandy followed him down the hall and stepped into the kitchen. LaChaise went on, and she glanced back at Martin. He'd picked up his bow, but he was watching the television. Sandy stepped into the kitchen. She hadn't done this because she suspected that the cops would kill anyone with LaChaise: but now she had no choice. She took the phone off the hook, punched in 911. When it was answered, she said, quietly, ''Sandy Darling. They're here.''
She put the receiver down beside the phone, leaving theline open, and started banging around in the cupboard, looking for a frying pan. LaChaise came by a minute later, carrying an AR under his arm. He was pushing shells into a magazine as he walked, and he continued by into the living room. ''Where'd you put your rifle?'' he asked Martin.
''Aw, shit, it's probably on the floor in the backseat,'' Martin said. ''I just threw it…''
He stopped, suddenly, at the sound: breaking glass down the stairs, then pounding feet. ''They're here,'' Martin said. He pointed a pistol at the door, and LaChaise ran to the window and looked out. ''Nothing on the street.''
A man screamed through the door: ''LaChaise, they know you're here, they're coming…'' The screaming continued for a moment but they couldn't make it out, and the feet pounded back down the stairs.
''Aw, shit, aw, shit,'' Martin yelled. ''Down the back…''
TWENTY-FIVE
STADIC WAS UP, DRESSED BUT STILL GROGGY-HEWAS A hundred hours behind on his sleep, he thought-and thinking about breakfast cereal when he heard the screaming on the radio.
He threw on a parka and gloves, grabbed his gun, and ran for his car. He was five minutes from downtown: he made it in four. The parking lot outside the medical center looked like a used car lot, cops coming in from everywhere in their own cars. Light racks lit up the snowstorm.
He paused, looking at the chaos, then went on by, and took a turn down Eleventh.
Yes: Lights shone down from Harp's apartment. Damnit: He went around the block, got a shotgun out of the trunk and loaded it. If he could flush them, unsuspecting, he could finish it. Dispatch said both men were hurt.
He decided to wait a few minutes: if they'd been shot, maybe the woman would be going out for medical supplies. He could take her at the door, and then go right on in. Otherwise, the place was a fort.
• • •
A DOCTOR CAME DOWN THE HALL TO THE PHONES AND said, ''Are you Davenport?''
''Yeah.'' Lucas was on the phone with Roux. He said, ''Hang on,'' and looked at the doctor.
''We got a picture, you might want to look at it.''
''OKAY.'' OUT THE WINDOW, HE COULD SEE THE MEDIA vehicles piling up down the street. Cameramen orbited the building, their lights like little suns illuminating the night. ''Gotta go, they got an X ray on Del,'' he said to Roux.
''I'll be there in fifteen minutes,'' she said.
Lucas followed the doctor back into the emergency room, where two other doctors were looking at an X ray clipped to a lighted glass. Lucas could see the outline of the Formica where it pierced Del's face.
''He got lucky,'' the doctor said, tapping the film. ''It just penetrated into the base of the tongue. Didn't quite make it through: we were afraid that it had penetrated the pal… the roof of the mouth, but it didn't. It's just sort of jammed in there. We'll get it cleaned out.''
''No damage?''
''He's gonna hurt like hell, but in a couple weeks, he'll be fine. He's gonna need a plastic guy on his neck, though. The thing looks nasty.''
''How about his wife?''
Cheryl had ripped some IV tubes loose when she'd crawled across to her husband, and had been bleeding. ''That's nothing,'' the doctor said. ''She's fine.''