Bad Blood

boom-boom-boom of heavier rifles, with a quicker crack-crack-crack of a semiauto, probably a .223 like their own. The field they were crossing was probably forty acres, a sixteenth of a square mile, some 440 yards across. It had been plowed in the fall, and the running was tough over the invisible, snow-covered hard-as-rock furrows.
    “Easy,” Virgil said, when Jenkins nearly went down. “You don’t need a broken leg.”
    They were both breathing hard, running in heavy coats, vests, and boots. Jenkins said, “Listen, when we come up, I think, I dunno, it looks like they’ve got the place surrounded, but most of them are in the front. They’re probably trying to make sure that nobody can get out.”
    “Look, there’s somebody inside, I think, on the ground floor. See, in the window . . . Coakley said they were upstairs. . . .”
    “I say we hit them in the back, clear that out, get our people out a back door or a window . . . however—”
    Virgil, gasping for air: “Okay. She said some of them are inside the house. When we clear the back, I’ll call her again, make sure they’re still upstairs, and then we both fire full mags right through the house . . . blow them out of there, pin them down, really chop the place up, scare the shit out of the, the ones who survive. . . . Watch for my burst.”
    “Good, good. Slow down, slow down now, we’re making too much noise. . . . I’m going to move off to the right . . . watch for my bursts.”
    They’d come at a back corner of the house, on the woodlot side, and the firing was continuing, which meant that maybe somebody was still alive inside. A hundred yards out, Jenkins dissolved in the dark, and Virgil closed in, to come up on the corner of the house, where he could see both the back and one side. He moved into the trees, stumbled over a downed wire fence, and then crept fifty yards through the trees, stalking now, slow hunting, aware that time was passing, listening to the shots pounding the house.
    At the end of the woodlot, he saw a sudden flash off to his left, saw a shape, heard the metallic clatter of a shell being ejected and another being loaded, in a bolt-action rifle, and waited for another flash, moving toward it. He could see a lump, wasn’t sure that it was a man, saw another flash, decided it was, and shot the man in the back. The man half stood, then pitched forward. Virgil moved up and found a body, an indistinct gray mass, trembling and kicking, as the brain died.
    Got on his phone, called Coakley: she came up and said, “Hurry.”
    “Everybody still upstairs?”
    “Yes, but I think . . . we can smell smoke . . . I think they’re gonna try to burn us out.”
    “Stay there for a minute, stay on the phone, we’re about to hose the place down.”
    He looked to his left, then moved that way, slowly, slowly . . . saw another lump moving and with no alternative, called, “Jenkins?”
    In reply: “Yes. We clear that way?”
    “We’re clear to the corner,” Virgil said.
    “There were two guys here,” Jenkins said. “They’re gone.”
    “Let’s clear out the bottom floor. Find a tree and get down. Are you ready?”
    “Go ahead; I’ll follow.”
    Virgil got half behind a thick tree, clicked his rifle over to full auto, stood and aimed at windowsill level and lashed out with a full-auto burst, blowing the whole magazine through the house, playing it across the clapboard siding, which shuddered with the impact. As the burst ended, Jenkins opened fire, the muzzle flashes suppressed but still visible, a stuttering flash that flickered across the snow.
    Virgil had just slapped the second mag into the rifle when he saw movement to his right, turned and lashed at it, couldn’t tell if he’d hit it.
    Jenkins shouted, “Going around right, get them out of the house.”
    “If I have to go in, I’ll go in the back door,” Virgil called back. “Keep up the pressure.” He got on the phone, and Coakley was there. “Can you make it down to the bottom floor, to the back door?”
    She said, “Dunn’s hurt; he’s hit in the foot. He’s bleeding pretty bad. He can’t walk.”
    There was another long stuttering burst, Jenkins working around to the right. Virgil said, “I’m coming through the back door. I’ll be there in a minute or two. Don’t shoot me.”
    “There’s a fire—”
    “I’m coming.”
    First he moved down to his right, where he’d seen the movement. Didn’t see more. Moved slowly up, still didn’t see