Chuck Logan - After the Rain

He had always been practical and unflappable. It would be close but he could make it. The cop on the left had no access across the field; had, in fact, dropped out of sight. The one on the right would be too late to stop him. They might have radioed to the Canadians, but it was happening so fast. A plane or a helicopter would be a problem.

But he saw no activity out ahead of him. He could do it.

Then he saw the steak of white shoot through the yellow field to his left, plowing down a slight rise. A police car coming almost out of control. Oily with crushed plants, flattening them like a wave. On a collision course.

The American fool cut through the field and was going to crash into him.

Reflex and instinct dictated that Joseph swerve right to avoid the onrushing car. But the moment he drove off the trail his wheels slipped into a muddy depression. He lost traction. Had to turn back to the trail…

But the American stopped abruptly just shy of the trail. He’d hit something. The air bag inflated in the police car. Yes, he’d crashed into something.

Joseph mashed his foot on the gas. It only spun his wheels and dug him in deeper. The van shook and then stalled. Instantly he jumped out the door. Wading through the muck-all right then. For a split second he’d considered reaching back for Broker’s pistol. No time. All he needed was the Browning in his hand. He kicked open the door, hit the ground in a lopsided run. The police car was heeled over, at an angle. The policeman was clawing at the air with his hands, wrestling the air bag aside, wiping something from his eyes. The Browning swept up. So Joseph would run the last thirty yards to Canada on his bad leg-but first he would kill himself an American.

Jimmy Yeager saw it happening. He slammed on the breaks and skidded off the road, aiming for a slight knoll in the field. He saw the van jerk to a halt. Saw Sauer block the crossing.

Three hundred yards and closing. Gotta stop now. No time. Two hundred was what he wanted but this would have to do. Timing the lurch of his vehicle so as not to lose time opening the door, he pushed the door and exited, dragging the M-14 by its skinny barrel and heavy flash suppressor. Shit! Can’t see! Fucking fold in the land. Immediately he hopped on the hood and then clambered onto the roof.

Now he could see. It was Joe, all right. Out of the van, running toward the State Patrol cruiser, his right arm extended.

The crack and snap of shots.

Jesus. Shaking, breathing all wrong; Yeager swung up the M-14. His old Corps dad made him learn to shoot offhand at 200 yards.

If you can’t shoot offhand you ain’t shit!

Joe running with his arm straight out, windows blowing apart in the state cruiser making it hard to see, to tell…All these shots and then Yeager squeezed off three of his own.

It wasn’t fair. They had so much. So much space, this lush yellow-and-green emptiness, the tilt-a-whirl blue sky. Joseph spun like a bad dancer, shredded. He smelled the raw sewage of the camps, saw the bloated corpses again at Sabra and Shatila. The tiny children with flies crawling on them. Cholera, typhoid, diseases that never touch these fat Americans.

Not fair.

He collapsed deeper into a million little yellow flowers. Moist like pollen, smelling like medicine, buzzing of insects. Footfalls coming from in back. Where was the Browning? But all feeling was draining from his arms. Then gone. George and Dale would have to kill the Americans. He, Joseph, was through with them.

Losing pieces of the sky and sound he thought he saw a broad white face loom over him. Lonely now. Leaving. Not sure why, he rasped his goodbye.

“ Ma’assalama… ”

Yeager stooped to hear Joe’s last words. All he got was a rattle of breath. He placed two fingers along Joe’s throat and felt for a pulse. There was none. Yeager hoisted himself up slowly. He was gasping, and starting to shake.

Joe was pitched on his side so Yeager could see his back and front were both a mess. They got him coming and going. Sauer’s.45 sure tore some holes coming out.

Sauer.

Yeager jogged the last fifteen yards to the State Patrol cruiser. Barry Sauer was sprawled forward across the front seat. His hair and grimacing teeth were covered in white powder. His arms still extended out the shattered passenger-door window. Gently, Yeager pried the.45 from the death grip of Sauer’s clamped hands. Yeager gritted his teeth, seeing the blood at Sauer’s throat, thick above his shirt collar. On his cheeks, his nose.

“Man,” Sauer gasped, “I am…sure…fucking glad…my…wife…made…me…wear… this .”

With his left hand, Sauer ripped at the top buttons of his uniform shirt, tearing the cloth away to show the two deep impact impressions on his Kevlar.

“You’re bleeding!” Yeager said, his voice too loud.

Sauer shook his head. “Just cuts. Glass. Whole lot of stuff flying around for a minute there.”

Yeager helped Sauer out of the car and supported him as they walked up to Joe’s body. Cars with flashing lights were converging. Norm’s Silverado. Cops from Towner.

“I yelled for him to drop it but there was no way,” Sauer said. Then more urgent. “The van?”

“I went by it. No sign of Dale. Was in a hurry. Then when I got to him he said something, couldn’t make it out. Sounded strange. Indian maybe.”

Sauer grimaced and said, “Now we got some people missing.”

Yeager nodded.

“Damn,” Sauer said. This time he pointed at his cruiser. “Old Man Kreuger probably only had one sleeper rock in his field and I had to hit it.” He shook his head, dripping blood. “Totaled another state car. That’s the second air bag I kissed in seven days.”

Yeager grinned. “Three more and they gotta make you an ace. Don’t sweat it, road dog, we’re gonna be all right.”

“How’s that?”

Yeager pointed at the cloud of dust kicked up by four new Border Parol Tahoes coming in a tight convoy. “The cavalry’s here.”

Face into the wave.

Numb, her teeth fuzzy. Hard to breathe. Nina tried to spit the taste of decay from her mouth, but she was too dry. Memory jabbed. Some drug he used.

Moving. Patterns of light and shadow dappled a wall of knotty pine veneer.

The morning’s shark attack all came back to her. Jane. Ace…

Not now. Focus on the present. She tried to move.

Spreadeagled on a bed.

Not good.

Resistance at her wrists and ankles. Little strength. She could move her head and she saw that her wrists were secured with double-tied bungee cords. The same for her wrists. The hooks had been crimped together tight. She strained against the cords with her wrists and legs. Some give. They were makeshift. Maybe she could defeat them. Given time, she figured, she could. But not if he kept giving her that drug.

He. Dale. The other Shuster.

Her mind churned, scurrying. Not okay yet. Process.

Automatically, she confronted the fear. She had been trained to convert it into a manageable image. So it became a wave building in the distance. An instructor in survival training explained that extreme fear was like the ocean. Too big to get your mind around, too fast to outrun. You had to navigate it. Great, so now I’m in the fucking Navy. You had to turn into it, meet it head on, ride it out. If you froze up or ran away, it would roll you up and take you down.

Orient yourself. Face into the wave.

She was lashed down on a bed in the rear of a van or camper. From some calm center in her brain she recalled that Broker had in-grained in her a suspicion of vans. She twisted around to get a better look. Not the kind of bed that was built into this kind of vehicle. This was an ordinary twin bed, wooden head and footboard, sideboard, slats and springs and mattress. The interior of the vehicle had been gutted and the bed brought in. The bedroom was partitioned from the front seat by a curtain. Dale. Up there driving. Maybe that other dude, too. Just ten, twelve feet away.