C Box - Blue Heaven

Gonzalez held his shotgun at port arms, then spun and used the butt of it to pound the front door.

“Jess Rawlins! This is the sheriff’s department. Come out of the house right now!”

The sound of the pounding and Gonzalez’s deep voice cut through the silence of the morning.

Newkirk racked the pump on his own shotgun, aimed again at the front door. Waited.

Gonzalez shot a glance to Singer, asking with his eyes, What now?

Singer nodded: Do it again.

This time, Gonzalez pounded the door so hard with the shotgun, Newkirk expected the glass to fall out of the panes of the window. He saw Swann open the truck door and slide out, stand unsteadily on the lawn with a pistol in his hand.

“Jess Rawlins! We need you to come out right now! RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”

Nothing. The pounding echoed back from the wall of timber to the north.

“Jesus Christ,” Gonzalez said, looking again at Singer. Swann limped across the lawn, climbed the steps to the porch, and struggled toward the corner of the house.

Newkirk thinking, They’re not there. No one’s inside. The chopper’s on the way. We’re fucked, but thank God it’s over. Thank God for that. But no …

Gonzalez stepped away from the front of the house, and for a second Newkirk expected the sergeant to try to kick the door down. But he must have decided against it, because he turned and took a step toward the picture window.

Newkirk watched as Gonzalez leaned over, trying to see through the slit in the curtains.

JESS WATCHED it all through the scope on his rifle, the safety off this time for sure. He had not taken a breath since Gonzalez had pounded on the door the second time and the sound washed up and over him.

Gonzalez was in front of the window, leading with his head, trying to see in. Jess was surprised to see that Swann was with them. His head was bandaged, and he appeared to be wearing a hospital smock.

Jess whispered, “Now.”

INSIDE THE front room, Eduardo Villatoro sighted down the barrel of the shotgun at the shadow on the other side of the curtain, put the front bead on the bridge of Gonzalez’s nose through the glass, and fired.

NEWKIRK HEARD the boom, saw Gonzalez’s head snap back and come apart at the same time, shards of glass cascading through the air, the shotgun clattering on the porch. The sergeant took two steps straight back away from the house and hit the railing and crashed through it. He fell in the grass with his arms outstretched over his head, his boots still up on the porch, shards of glass dropping from the window in a delayed reaction.

Swann cried out and flung himself against the outside of the house, near the door but away from the window. He held his pistol with both hands, the muzzle pointed down, ready to react.

“Goddammit!” Singer said, standing, raising the AR-15, and the morning was filled with a long, furious ripping sound as he raked the house on both sides of the window from right to left, then back again.

ANNIE HAD peered out from behind the cast-iron stove, where she and William had hidden, in time to see Villatoro raise the shotgun and fire. Her mother pulled her back down. After the blast, which was much louder than anything Annie had anticipated, her mother gathered her and William closer as bullets ripped through the walls, a few clanging off the stove behind which they hid.

PLACING THE crosshairs between Singer’s shoulder blades, Jess squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked, the scope jerked upward, over the top of the roof of his house. He quickly worked the bolt and peered back down the scope, saw Singer arching as if stretching his back, slowly turning around to face him, holding his weapon out away from his body.

Did I miss? No-Jess could see a bloom of dark red blood on Singer’s coat and a spray of it across the hood of the white SUV.

Jess quickly found Newkirk in the scope. The man was crouched, looking up, searching the ridge for the source of the shot. Newkirk looked confused, and very human. Jess shot him, saw Newkirk fall back into the door of the car, then roll away, under the car, out of sight.

When Jess swung the rifle back to Singer, Singer was gone, probably hiding under the SUV.

And where was Swann? Jess couldn’t see him on the porch.

NEWKIRK FELT as though someone had kicked him in the stomach so hard it took his breath away. He rolled under the car until his shoulder thumped the front differential, where he stopped.

The engine radiated heat above him, the grass was icy and wet beneath him. Slowly, the kicked feeling receded, and something burned. He imagined a red-hot poker pressed against his bare stomach. He knew what it was. He’d been shot. He always wondered what it would feel like to be gutshot, to have a bullet rip through his soft organs, opening up their fluid contents to mix together inside of him.

From where he was stuck under the car, he rolled his head back, looked around.

Gonzalez’s body was in the grass ten feet away. Steam rose from the mass of pulp that used to be his face. He could still make out half of Gonzo’s mustache, though. The other half was somewhere else.

He flopped his head the other way. Singer had pulled himself up again. His boots were there, near the front of the car.

“Newkirk, goddammit,” Singer was saying, his voice filling with liquid, “I’m hit. Where are you? I need cover fire.”

Newkirk kept his mouth shut, for once. He wondered where his shotgun was. Instead, he drew his service weapon, racked the slide, held it tight to him.

He was in the third person again, where he longed to be, hovering over the body of the man wedged beneath the car, watching, shaking his head with disappointment, relieved that it was all happening to somebody else.

Monday, Newkirk thought. It was Monday morning. The boys and Lindsey should be getting ready to go to school. Wouldn’t they be ashamed to know where their father was right now?

The car rocked, and another shot boomed down from the ridge. Then another. This time he heard breaking glass, and it cascaded down around him in the grass.

A long rip from Singer’s AR-15 made his ears ring.

Where had Swann disappeared to?

JESS HAD SWITCHED to the.25-35 when he was out of cartridges with the.270. As he levered in the first shell, there was an angry burst as bullets hit and ricocheted off the plates of slate and cut branches from trees in back of him. Something stung his face, and he reached up, saw the blood on his fingers. He rolled to his side, then pushed the barrel of the saddle carbine through a V in the rock.

Without the scope, he could barely see Singer’s coat through the broken windows of the SUV, but he could see it, and he fired.

Jess thought, I’m shooting men, but it doesn’t feel like it . He’d never had a wide-open shot in Southeast Asia, not like this. He could not think of the men down there as human beings but as enemy targets. Targets who would do harm to the children, Monica, him, his ranch…

ANNIE HEARD the back door smash in but didn’t see Swann until he jerked her out from behind the stove by her hair. She screamed and struggled, kicking at the floor, heard William burst into tears, and shout “NO!,” saw her mother wheel and both of her hands go up, pleading. Villatoro had been crouching behind a desk, but he rose when he heard the scream.

“Drop that shotgun or everybody dies,” Swann said to Villatoro.

Villatoro hesitated but dropped the shotgun on the floor.

Swann said, “You were supposed to be dead. That fucking Newkirk…” He shot Villatoro twice- bangbang -and the retired detective collapsed in a heap on the floor.

“Oscar, don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her,” her mother pleaded. “Take me if you need to take someone. Don’t hurt Annie anymore.”