Niceville

was coming from a local news chopper following the chase. Coker could see the roof-rack lights on the patrol cars flickering red and blue.
    Coker twisted the VOLUME button and heard the hyperventilating commentary of a young female newscaster describing the chase. The image pulled back as the chopper lifted to clear a line of transmission towers, briefly showing a rolling blue country with low brown hills far off to the south.
    Coker was waiting in those low brown hills.
    He picked up the radio, keyed it.
    “So far no roadblocks, road is clear. Confirm you have four units. Two state and a deputy. The blue Dodge Charger is one of their chase units. A hemi, three sixty-eight mill, a roll-cage, those heavy-duty ram bars. They’ve got him laying back in the pack but at the first chance he’ll pull around and climb right up your tailpipe. He’ll use those bumper bars on your off-side taillight, put you into a spin. Don’t let him get close.”
    “We won’t,” said Danziger. “So nobody up ahead?”
    Danziger’s tone was still flat, but Coker could hear the tension in his throat. Coker was monitoring the police frequencies, listening to the cross talk between dispatch and the pursuit cars.
    “They’ve called for units from Sectors Four and Nine, but so far only two units can respond, and they’re twenty miles off, on the other side of the Belfair Range. They’re spread all over the county and most of their guys are up on the interstate, helping with traffic around the crash site. That’s where their chopper is too.”
    “Okay,” said Danziger. “Good—”
    Coker heard a solid thump, and the sound of glass cracking, and then Merle Zane’s voice, swearing softly.
    “Christ. They’re shooting at us.”
    Coker glanced down at the television, heard the announcer’s excited voice, her words tumbling out in a rush. The banner along the bottom of the screen read HAPPENING NOW! POLICE CHASE ROUTE 311 SOUTH SKYCAM NEWS POLICE CHASE! HAPPENING NOW! but the crawl did notname her. Coker figured whoever she was, she was having a hell of a good time.
    Good for you
.
    Get it while you can, kid
.
    “Like I said. You’re letting them get too close.”
    Coker heard the sound of a pistol firing, a series of sharp percussive cracks, and then Merle Zane’s voice.
    “Danziger’s shooting back.”
    “Well, tell him don’t, Merle. Shooting back just motivates them. He oughta know that. Tell him to keep his head down or they’ll take it off.”
    He heard Merle Zane barking at Danziger, heard Danziger’s heated reply, but the shooting stopped, and then Merle was talking again.
    “Mile marker 40. We’re two miles out.”
    “I’m here,” he said, and clicked off.
    He turned the sound on the plasma screen down and shut off the police radio. Didn’t really matter what the State guys were doing right now.
    Whatever it was, it was too late.
    The news chopper—now
that
was a problem.
    He looked at the TV screen, trying to get an idea of how high up the chopper was, the angles, the kind of machine. Most of the news and some of the police choppers in the state were Eurocopter 350s. What he could hear of the rotor noise and the engine sounded like that’s what this one was. Nice fast machine.
    But light and thin-skinned.
    A flying egg.
    He leaned back against a tree trunk, eased the rifle in his lap, took a slow breath, and opened himself up to what was going on around him.
    In a stand of cottonwoods on the far side of the road a bunch of crows were bickering with another bunch of crows. The wind off the flatlands was stirring the pampas grass, making its shaggy heads bob and its brittle stalks hiss and chatter as they rubbed together. The afternoon sun was blood-warm on his left cheek. He looked up. The sky was a cloudless blue. Down the slope of the hill a possum was digging in the red earth, its tail showing like a curved black stick above the pale yellow grass. Three hawks were circling overhead, wings spreadand fixed, gliding in lazy circles, riding the thermals as the day’s heat cooked off the lowlands. The air smelled of sweetgrass, clover, hot earth, and baking tarmac. It reminded him of Billings and the sweetgrass coulees down in the Bighorn valley. In the distance, faint but growing, Coker could hear the wail of sirens.
    He looked down at the TV screen, saw the line of cars following Merle’s black Magnum, that dark blue interceptor weaving up through the pack, closing in on Merle as the two-lane started to