John Sandford - Heat Lightning

More gunfire, and then Bunch shouted, “I got him, but I’m hit, I’m hit, ah, Jesus, I’m hit…”

Raines said, “Virgil, you’ve got one not moving in front of you, one moving away.”

Jarlait: “I got the one in front of Virgil, I had him dead in my sights.”

Raines: “We got one moving down to the water, Jarlait, if you move sideways down to the water you might be able to see them, you might have to move forward… Virgil, you can move forward… Paul, can you and your guys get to Rudy? Can you get to Rudy?”

Queenen said, “I can hear him, but where’s the other guy, is he still there?”

“He’s not moving, he may be down, I’m going to illuminate with the IR… okay, I can see him, he looks like he’s down, he’s on his back, if you go straight ahead you should get to Rudy… Rudy, I can see Rudy waving… Rudy, the guy above you is moving, but not much. He’s crawling, I think, can you see him?”

And Queenen said, “Is Rudy moving? Is Rudy crawling, I can see a guy crawling-” Rudy shouted, “No,” in the open, and Queenen opened up, ten fast shots, and Raines, his voice still cool, said, “I think you rolled him.”

JARLAIT SHOUTED, in the open, “I can’t see them.”

Virgil moved. The light was coming up fast, and he went forward, and Raines said in his ear, “Virgil, I can’t tell if the guy in front of you is down, but he’s not moving at all. The other one is down at the water.”

Virgil moved again, fast dodging moves from tree to tree. Raines called, “You’re right on top of him, he’s just downhill.”

Virgil saw the body: Phem, with a rifle. He was lying on his back, looking sightlessly at the brightening sky, the last he would ever have seen; his chest had been torn to pieces.

Virgil could hear Mai’s voice, calling out to somebody, the tone urgent, well ahead, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. Vietnamese?

Queenen: “Okay, the first guy’s dead… Larry, watch me, I’m moving over to the left, you see me? Watch right up the hill there… I’m gonna make a move here.”

A few seconds, then Queenen: “Okay, the second guy is dead. Rudy, where are you?”

Raines called: “They’re moving, they’re on the water… they’re moving fast…”

Virgil heard somebody crashing along the riverbank, assumed it was Jarlait, and then a long burst of automatic-weapon fire, interspersed with tracers, chewed up the riverbank and cut back into the woods and he went down.

Raines: “Louis, are you okay?”

“I’m okay. Jesus, they almost shot me.” His breath was hoarse through the walkie-talkie; another old guy.

Another long burst, then another, and Virgil realized that somebody-Mai? -was loading magazines and hosing down the woods as thoroughly as possible, keeping them stepping and jiving until they could get down the river, in the boat, to wherever their vehicle was.

He left Phem and hurried forward through the trees, crashing around, knowing he was noisy, and another burst slashed and ricocheted around him, and he went down again, and somebody shouted, “Man,” and then, on the radio, “That last one… I’m bleeding, but I don’t think it’s too bad.”

Virgil thought, Shit, turned back to help out, then heard Jarlait yell to the wounded man, “I see you. I’m coming your way, don’t shoot me, I’m coming your way.”

Virgil turned and jogged through the woods, fifty yards, a hundred yards, Raines calling into his ear, “I’m gonna lose you in a minute, Virgil, they’re already off my screens… I’m losing you…”

Virgil ran another fifty yards, to a muddy little point, risked a move to the water. The morning fog hung two or three feet deep over the water, wisps here and there, and Virgil saw only a flash of them, three or four hundred yards away, heading into the Canadian side, around another bend in the river; they disappeared in a quarter second, behind a screen of willows. No sound-they were using a trolling motor. He put his aim point a foot high, where he thought they’d gone, and dumped the whole magazine at them. When he ran dry, he kicked the empty mag out, jammed in another, and dumped thirty more rounds into the trees about where the boat should have been.

He thumbed the radio and shouted, “I’m coming back, watch me, I’m running back.”

When he got back to the house, Jarlait was there, standing over McDonald, as one of the trucks backed across the yard toward them. Jarlait looked at Virgil and said, “Rudy’s hit in the back. He’s hurt. This guy’s got a bad cut on his scalp, but not too bad. Needs some stitches.”

VIRGIL SAID, “So what are you up to?”

“What?”

He nodded down to a canoe, rolled up on the bank. “There’s a chance I hit them, or one of them. I’m going after them.”

“Let’s go,” Jarlait said. “Fuckin’ Vietcong.”

THE CANOE was an old red Peter Pond, rolled upside down with two plastic-and-aluminum paddles and moldy orange kapok life jackets stowed under the thwarts. Virgil twisted it upright, frantic with haste, chanting, “C’mon, c’mon,” and they threw it in the river, and clambered aboard with their weapons and Virgil’s backpack.

Whiting had backed the truck down to McDonald and was helping the wounded man into the truck; McDonald had a scalp gash that must’ve come from a wood splinter. Queenen saw them manhandling the canoe to the river and shouted, “Virgil, that’s Canada,” and Virgil saw Raines spinning out of the driveway in the other truck, running to the hospital with Bunch, and Virgil ignored Queenen and said to Jarlait, “If we roll, that armor will pull you under. Grab one of those life jackets,” and Jarlait grunted, “Ain’t gonna roll,” and they were off…

They slanted upstream, paddling hard, Virgil aiming to land a couple of hundred yards north of where he’d seen the jon boat disappear. If they were caught on the open river, they were dead.

They crossed in two minutes or so. Jarlait jumped out of the front of the boat, splashed across a muddy margin, and pulled the canoe in. Virgil stepped out into the shallow water and lifted the stern with a grab loop as Jarlait lifted the bow, and they dropped it fully on shore. A muddy game trail led back into the trees, and they took it for thirty feet, and somebody said in Virgil’s ear, “Virgil, the local cops are coming in.”

Virgil lifted the radio to his face and said, “Keep them off the place until we get back… Don’t be impolite, but tell them that the crime scene is all over the place and we need to get a crime-scene crew in there.”

Jarlait said into his radio, “You guys shut up unless you see these people and then tell us. But shut up.” To Virgil, he said off-radio, “Let’s go.”

THE CANADIAN SIDE was a snarling mass of brush, and they walked away from the river to get out of it. Virgil said quietly, “That topo map showed a road straight west of here-they’ve probably got a car back in the trees. Gotta hurry.”

They ran due west, quietly as they could, but with some inevitable breaking of sticks and rustling of leaves, and after two hundred yards or so, saw the road ahead. With Virgil now leading, they turned south, parallel to the road, inside the tree line, and ran another hundred and fifty yards, where a field opened out in front of them. They could see nothing across the field, and Jarlait asked, “Are you sure they’re this far down?”

“Yeah, a little further yet. There might be farm tracks between those fields right down to the trees.”

He started off again, back toward the river now, running in the trees, off the edge of the field. They spooked an owl out of a tree, and it lifted out in absolute silence and flew ahead of them for fifty yards, like a gray football, then sailed left through the trees.