Dark of the Moon

“We’ve got contact with Feur: he’s still inside, he won’t talk, says for you to call him.”
    “I’ll be there in three or four minutes, if you can stall him. You could listen in.”
     
    D EPUTIES HAD SET UP a roadblock just off the interstate. Virgil went on through, did a U-turn four hundred yards out, backed down to the wrecked DEA truck, and left his truck there. Carrying the M-16 he’d taken from the DEA agent and two mags, he worked his way back down the roadside ditch.
     
    T HE HOUSE WAS a ruin. The second floor was gone, part of it falling inside the frame of the house, part of it out in the yard. Popping his head up every few yards, Virgil could see what appeared to be olive-drab sandbags, the kind used by the Corps of Engineers for flood control.
    They had been bunkered up, he thought, but the pounding from the grenade launcher had knocked out the frame of the house.
    As he crawled, he noticed that there was no firing; very little sound at all. A lot of gasoline around, though. Five dead trucks, all shot to pieces, leaking gas; smoke coming out of one of them.
    Stryker was no longer in the ditch. He’d moved across the road, and was sitting behind one of the trucks. Virgil heard a grenade hit the house, and made his move, slid in next to Stryker.
    Another agent came running over. All he said was, “You ready? It’s for you.” He had a phone in his hand, and he pushed the “call” button, and handed it to Virgil.
    Feur answered a minute later. “What?”
    Virgil said, “This is Virgil Flowers. You feel like coming out?”
    Feur chuckled. “No, I guess not. I have a question for you, though. Why in the hell did you come in shooting? You could have knocked on the door. I could take a couple years inside. But you came in shooting and now there are dead cops, and I’m not gonna sit on death row, waiting for the needle.”
    “Ah, man,” Virgil said. “It was Franks’ goddamn dogs. We weren’t shooting you. The dogs went after an agent, chewing him up. Somebody shot at the dog, somebody shot back from the house.”
    “All this happened because of dogs?” Feur didn’t seem surprised.
    “Well, not exactly. If you hadn’t been making a ton of crank, if you hadn’t built bunkers inside the house, if you hadn’t shot back…Was that you, or Trevor, or one of the other guys?”
    “Trevor,” Feur said. “Silly fool. Always liked those guns too much. He paid for it: he’s gone now. There’s only two of us left, me’n John. We’re both hurt, trying to decide what to do.”
    “You aren’t gonna take any more cops with you,” Virgil said. “The DEA is talking about bringing in a tank from the National Guard. Run that house over like a trash compactor.”
    After a few seconds of silence, Feur said, “Call me back in two minutes. John’s hurt, I need to see what he wants to do.”
     
    V IRGIL PUNCHED OFF. He’d been holding the phone close, so the agent could listen in, and the agent said, “Good. If he’s talking, he’ll quit.” Then, “What about our guys?”
    Virgil said, “One’s real bad, one may be dying. Not dead yet, they’re working on both of them at the hospital. Pirelli’s got a bunch of holes, but I don’t think he’s gonna die. What about the others…?”
    “We sent two more in; not good, but not terrible.” The agent nodded, chewed his lip, said, “Why’d Franks turn those dogs loose?”
    “Crazy guy,” Virgil said. “A whole house full of crazy guys.”
     
    H E LOOKED at the phone, and redialed. Feur answered, and said, “We’re quittin’. But we can’t get out of here. We’re all piled in. We’re not gonna shoot, but you’ll have to get us out.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Right in the middle of the house, first floor, the whole top floor came down on us. Can’t see any cracks, just a lot of lumber. John is hurtin’ bad.”
    Virgil could hear another man talking in the background, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. “Gonna take a while,” Virgil said. “I’ll tell you what, Reverend. You best not resist. Won’t do any good, for one thing, but the other thing is, these boys are pretty pissed. If they toss an incendiary grenade in there, you’ll get a little preview of hell.”
    “We’re done,” Feur said. “We’re done.”
    “Just in case, you know, something happens,” Virgil said. “Why’d you do the Gleasons and the Schmidts?”
    Feur said, “I don’t lie on the Bible, Virgil. I had nothing to do with