Niceville

cars.
    Technically, if this were a Recon Marine ambush, there would be a five-man fire team on the long side of an L-shaped barrier, a chain of command-linked claymore mines at the forward edge—seven hundred steel balls embedded in a curved packet of C-4 plastic explosive, with those lovely words embossed on the front: FACE TOWARDS ENEMY . Click the clacker and off they all go in a blinding roar and a hailstorm of steel to shred the poor bastards in the kill zone, followed up by a mad minute from every rifle and automatic weapon in the squad and, God willing, a mortar to seal the deal.
    But this afternoon there was only Coker and his Barrett .50, at the top of the S-curve, watching them come. He could see Merle’s thin white face behind the wheel, and Danziger’s flash of dirty blond hair. Everything slowed down.
    To the left side of Merle’s black car he had a pretty good slice of the dark blue interceptor coming up.
    Not all of it.
    But enough.
    He put the second shot of his five-round mag into the hood of the chase car. The super-heated engine block exploded in every direction, including chunks of hot iron that flew backwards right through the firewall and into the driver’s face, chest, and belly. The car swerved as the driver’s hands dragged the wheel to the right.
    It slammed into a line of trees, blood spattered across the inside of the windscreen and sheeted over the air bag. The cruiser settled, and began to steam.
    Now Coker had a clear line on the second car, the black-and-white sheriff’s car. One man behind the wheel. Coker could see his face turning as he flew by the wreck of the interceptor, see his mouth open in shock. He recognized the guy, an earnest young Cullen County cop named Billy Goodhew.
    At that moment Merle Zane and Charlie Danziger flew by Coker’sposition, horn blaring, Danziger staring out through the passenger window.
    Coker never turned his head, was only dimly aware of them passing. You could have fired a 9 mm next to his ear right then and he would not have flinched.
    Coker’s third round took Billy Goodhew’s head and upper body off and spattered it all over the prisoner partition behind him. It also took out the rear window and, in one of those weird accidents that happen in firefights, sent a glittering sun-drenched sheet of the deputy’s arterial blood and brain tissue across the windshield of the patrol unit on his tail.
    Both state cars broke hard, tires smoking, grilles dipping down, cutting left and right, coming to a tail-to-tail blocking position, overlapped, trying to establish a defensive stand.
    Coker put his fourth round into the driver’s side of the windshield on the left-hand car, saw the roof stipple with fragments and the shattered window cover itself with a sheet of black blood. Nobody popped out of the passenger door, so Coker figured the driver was alone.
    Poor bastard.
    Thanks to the recession, most of the state and county guys had been cut back to singles, even at night. It was a goddam disgrace. Fucking bean counters down in Cap City. They’d never have to make a DUI stop at two in the morning, all alone out on a deserted highway, pulling over some overloaded black Escalade with tinted windows and God-only-knows-what waiting inside it.
    Coker turned his attention to the other car, which was stopped now, a lone trooper climbing out from behind the wheel, a shotgun in his left hand, a radio in his right, his Stetson jammed on all wrong and a wide-eyed holy shit expression on his round white face.
    The kid turned and scooted around to the defilade side of the unit, out of Coker’s direct line of fire, trying to put as much heavy metal between himself and whatever was shooting at him as he could.
    Coker let him get set, even let him get off a round, just to make sure he knew where the center of his mass would be, and then he put his fifth round straight through the entire width of the car and blew the kid into bloody chunks.
    The trooper’s shotgun clattered backwards.
    And the quiet came down.
    A moment of pressurized silence, Coker’s heart thudding in his ribs. And then he got up, shook his head to clear the ringing, and looked around him as if seeing the place for the first time.
    The stillness was unsettling and in spite of the ear protection his hearing was vague and muffled, as if the world were wrapped in a bubble. His shoulder throbbed from the kick of the Barrett.
    On the far side of the road a small forest fire had broken out and a