Чак Хоган - The Standoff

They both nearly nodded then, Fagin looking across at the dark trees and Perkins doing the same. Fagin could feel the conversation ending then and them going their separate ways. He was glad.

“You know what?” he said.

Perkins shook his head. “What?”

Fagin spat at a tuft of straw weeds, and missed. “I’m just waiting for him to fuck up.”

Banish switched off the flashlight. They were coming up through the trees. Mellis was a few yards ahead of Banish, Blood somewhere behind. The big kid climbed quickly but Banish kept him close and in full view. The wider spacing of the trunks meant that they were near the top. They were into the zone. The spotter marshals sat somewhere high in the trees behind them. Music blared into the no-man’s-land from the left.

Mellis covered the uneven, rising ground in broad, lumbering strides, often talking to Banish over his shoulder. “It’ll go easier for him now, right? This’ll make things easier.”

Banish said, “When did you help him set it up?”

“Some months ago. Glenn always knew what was coming. He knew he was being watched. He always said Judgment would come at his front doorstep. The first shots of the final battle would be fired there, he said.”

Banish could smell the dogs. “Where did he get the mine?”

“I think he stole it off an army base. Don’t know for sure. Looks like a small suitcase without a handle, and curved.”

“I know what it looks like,” Banish said. “How much farther?”

“I think we’re almost there.”

The odor of the dogs was pungent and pervasive and Banish directed his breathing through his mouth. “How close are we to the cabin?”

“Maybe fifty yards,” said Mellis.

“Twenty-five,” said Blood behind them.

Mellis was looking around more now, picking up speed, anxious. Dull moonlight fell more freely through the thinning tree cover. “Almost there,” he said. “It’ll go better for Glenn, right? Less injuries, less killing?”

“You are doing the right thing,” Banish said.

Mellis moving impatiently. “Right around here somewheres.”

“Where’s the trip?”

“Not sure,” Mellis said. “Be careful.”

Banish dropped back a bit, allowing Mellis some room as he followed him down and up again over a steep gully. There was a large fallen tree ahead of them and some ragged stumps on the other side. Mellis moved quickly toward it, Banish more cautious behind, glancing around.

Mellis said, “It’s right over here.”

Mellis reached the fallen tree and climbed over it, disappearing for a moment, then straightened up fast. He turned to face them and there was something black and glimmering in his shaking hands. Banish barely had time to react. Mellis raised the gun and aimed it at Banish’s head across the fallen stump. Banish tried to get his hands up. There was a snap and a brilliant flare of white, and the gun muzzle exploded in his face.

Banish went down. As though someone had slipped a rope around his neck and yanked it from behind. The shot rang to near deafness in Blood’s ears. He was looking down at Banish. Banish was lying in a heap and not moving. Mellis was heaving bursts of mist and giggling nervously at the sight.

Then he looked up at Blood. Blood brought the shotgun level, groping for the trigger. Too late. He took off diving for cover behind a clutch of trees as Mellis fired on him, choking rounds from the handgun and yelling something crazy.

Fagin looked up fast at the racket. His face went taut. “Fucking double-cross!” he said, and started at a run for the Hueys.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Taber scanned the hazy green woods below with his NVD. Radio silence had been broken and there were now twelve different voices yelling at once in his ear. He had heard the gunfire. He was scoping out the woods for individuals. His right hand found his Remington and brought it to his side and felt for the trigger guard. He was breathing short, sharp breaths.

Motion in the trees up ahead. In murky shades of green, two ghostly figures moving along the ground, both racing away about fifteen yards apart, both headed up toward the top of the mountain. Taber saw traded heat bursts corresponding with reports from two different weapons. He sighted one figure, then the other.

He heard his name on the radio and clicked on fast. “I can’t tell who’s—” he was yelling, then stray rounds sprayed the leafy branches above his head. He ducked and pitched back blindly against the body of the tree.

Mellis hauling up the mountain, laughing crazily and firing behind him. Blood reloading, weaving tree to tree, shotgun blasting. Mellis was maybe fifteen yards ahead but getting away, galloping hard through the woods while Blood advanced in fits, using the trees for cover and taking fire.

There was a brief respite. Blood, pulse racing, reasoned that Mellis was reloading and so tried to take the advantage, keeping on the pressure with short, sweeping blasts and racing ahead. As the tree spacing grew more generous, affording more and more steely moonlight, Blood could make out the cabin sitting silently in the distance. Then Mellis crossed into view again, firing downhill and chipping away at branches and plugging trees, and Blood spun around fast behind a fat trunk, taking shelter from the hail.

He rolled over onto his stomach. He felt his knees and brought them up under him and groped around. There was a buzzing drone in his head so distant that he reasoned it must have been the neighbor’s telephone. For some reason it woke him. He reached for the pillow next to his and felt for his wife’s shoulder.

Then Banish remembered the woods. He remembered being shot. He flailed around and found the hard, dead bark of the fallen tree next to him.

Banish explored his face with rough, trembling hands. He found no wound there. His heart went cold.

He flapped around. Dark night. Reports cracking under the steady droning. The sickening smell of the dogs. The woods coming alive. He was vulnerable here.

Banish held his hand up in front of his face. Nothing. The woods were pitch-black. He knelt against the felled tree and tried to stand, but could not tell exactly which way was up and then slipped back down again. He landed hard against the dead tree.

Where was Mellis? The son of a bitch. He would get Mellis. He would hunt the bastard down and kill him.

The flashlight. Banish slipped it off his belt and picked at the switch. Nothing. He shook it and felt the batteries click and tried it again. They were dead.

They were in a race for the cabin. Blood could hear Mellis’s strangled laughter like war whoops behind the stuttered backward cracking of his gun. Blood answered, but as always the woods got in the way and he did more defoliating than anything.

This was his last push. He knew he had but one more chance to cut Mellis down before they reached the cabin. As Blood moved wide to his right, hastily vying for a side shot, he could see the cabin more clearly. He could see now that the near wall was somehow starting to move. Black rectangles appeared in it like slots sliding open. Blood slowed and eventually stopped. He watched gun barrels come poking out. He turned and dove hard behind a deadfall tree.

The firepower was all-out deafening. The mountain filled with noise and rippling echoes and the branches shook, the cabin fire shredding the surrounding trees to mulch and kindling. Hot rounds picked at the dead trunk he was lying behind and pitched splinters into the air, Blood protecting his face with his arms. He stayed down low. He crept long ways to a clear spot blocked by standing trees and cautiously put up his head.