Niceville

in the humid and ammonia-stinking confines of the Belfair Pike General Store, a good quarter mile into the tangled old forest south-southeast of Route 311.
    Since both men were chain-smokers and neither of them was ready to step outside the barn to have one and since the hay-dust-and-bat-guano-fueled explosion that would have immediately followed lighting one up inside the barn would likely attract the wrong sort of attention, the two were reduced to sitting a few yards apart, Merle on an overturned oil drum and Charlie Danziger on a rickety three-legged stool, both staring into the middle distance as the light outside slowly changed from greenish yellow to pink to gold.
    Now and then they heard the mutter of a helicopter in the distance, and the Doppler wail of a passing patrol car as the state and county guys raced back and forth and up and down and, when the opportunity presented itself, sideways.
    There was a definite sense inside the barn, unspoken but growing, that the hunt had peaked and passed over and was now moving outwards, expanding the perimeter to include larger sections of the county and then the state.
    The take, the haul, the
proceeds
, not yet inventoried, were contained in four large black canvas duffel bags and temporarily concealed in a concrete subbasement in a far corner, the hatch hidden under a pile of barn boards and car tires.
    The black Magnum, wiped down and stripped clean of every possible identifier, had been rolled into an empty horse stall, covered with a tarp, and left to gather dust.
    Two nearly identical beige sedans, one a recent Ford and the other an older Chevy, sat just inside the barn doors, equipped with plausible plates and papers, ready to take Merle and Danziger away in opposite directions.
    Now that the adrenaline was ebbing and a leaden fatigue was setting in, both men were ready to take their cut and go, Merle to return to his job with the Bardashi boys and Charlie Danziger to finish up the details here and go back, for a while at least, to his life with Wells Fargo. In the vernacular, it was long past Miller Time, and the waiting was hard.
    On the other hand, a payday of 33 percent of an estimated two and a half million dollars was a consoling thought, and both men were professionally resigned to the situation.
    And if all went well, Merle Zane was thinking, this could be the beginning of a beautiful—or at least profitable—friendship.
    At this taut point, Danziger’s cell phone rang, a muted chirp in the pocket of his brown leather jacket. Merle straightened up on his oil drum, reaching instinctively for the mid-sized Taurus nine-mill in his belt. Danziger held up a hand, his callused leathery palm out, shaking his head.
    “Yeah?”
    Merle could not hear what was being said on the other end, only that whatever it was made Danziger’s face tighten up.
    Danziger put the cell phone to his chest.
    “Go check the perimeter. Coker says there may be civilians inside the fence line.”
    “Not cops?”
    “Says no. Maybe hunters. Go look. Be careful.”
    Merle pulled out his Taurus and stepped softly over to the barn doors, leaning down to look out through the gaps in the boarding. All he could see was weeds and the top of the lane where it opened up into the clearing. He was reaching for the door handle when Charlie Danziger shot him in the back, a rushed shot, hitting Merle in the lower back instead of the spine, a complication which proved to be quite troublesome later on.
    The impact slammed Merle up against the barn doors and he crashed through the rotten wood, turning as he fell, landing on his back in the dust outside. He rolled to his left as a second shot scored the dirt a foot away from his thigh.
    The barn wall was now between Zane and Danziger. He heard Danziger’s boots scraping on the concrete floor of the barn. Merle fired four quick shots in a horizontal line at roughly chest height along the wooden slats.
    He heard Danziger cry out, a startled grunt, followed by the satisfying tumble of a body hitting the floor hard. A second later the barn boards began to shred as Charlie Danziger, apparently still very much in the game, began firing blind, straight through the wall. One stray round caught Zane in the right shoulder, a glancing impact, but the blunt shock threw him back to the ground again.
    He rolled, got back up, stumbling backwards as he emptied the Taurus into the barn, concentrating his shots in and around the area where he thought he could see