Rough Country

pointing the deputies after the truck, and Virgil asked Wendy, “What’s back there?”
    “Nothing. He can’t get out of the pasture. . . . There’s a shortcut down to Hourglass Lake. A trail . . .”
    “There’s a boat?”
    “No, there’s a place you can fish, but it’s not our property. There’s swamp on both sides of it, there’s a creek that goes in there. . . . I don’t know. He can’t swim that good, so . . . There’s a cabin that way.” She pointed. “Left when you get to the lake. If he got to that road I guess he could get out. It’d be a long walk.”
    Phillips had heard the last part of it, and he said, “It’s wet country back there. I don’t see where he’s going. There’s hardly any way out.”
    Cop cars were going in on Slibe’s trail, and Sanders hurried up: “I called for the state patrol chopper. It’s gonna be a while.” A cop car headed out of the driveway, and he added, “I got guys going over to Hourglass; they can seal off the landing, and the roads.”
    Virgil said, “Why didn’t he run? He seemed to know what he was doing.”
    Berni, who’d come up behind Wendy, said, “We’d go swimming down on Hourglass sometimes. Slibe’s got an old plastic toolbox, you know, like a truck toolbox, hidden back in the woods. It’s got fire-starter and a minnie net and some fishing poles.”
    “But how’s he . . .” Sanders began.
    Berni said, “It’s big enough for a gun. I never thought of it when you were here looking for the gun, but it’s big enough for one, easy.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL TO SANDERS: “Get your guys. If he’s out there with a .223 with a scope, they gotta back off. Those vests won’t work. Gonna get some guys shot up if they push him.”
    Sanders was already jogging toward his car.
    “You know what we need?” Berni asked.
    Virgil: “What?”
    “We need the Deuce to track him down.”
     
     
     
    THE COPS WERE ALL gunning up, and Wendy asked, “They’ll kill him, won’t they?” and Virgil thought that was probably the case, but didn’t say so.
    “Where’s the lake?” he asked. “Exactly?”
    Wendy pointed to a low spot in the skyline. “Right down there. But it’s more than half a mile.”
    Virgil said, “I gotta go out,” and, “I’ll try not to hurt him, if I see him.”
    He went to his truck and got his vest and his shotgun, slapped the Velcro tabs in place, walked over to Sanders, who was directing traffic. “I’m going up on that high spot.” He pointed to a place thirty degrees to the right of the tree line dip that marked the lake.
    “You think that shotgun’s gonna work? I can get you an AR-15 if you’d rather,” Sanders offered.
    “I’m okay—but tell your guys where I’m at. I don’t want to get shot up by a friendly.”
    “Take a radio.” He yelled at one of the cops: “Bill—give me your radio.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL TOOK THE HANDSET, hung it on his belt, climbed into the truck and followed the rest of the crowd through the broken fence, and bounced over the pasture. At the far end of the field, he could see where Slibe’s truck had crashed through another fence, this one barbed wire, and had gone into the trees. The cop cars were stopped short of that, and most of the cops were standing behind their cars, while two more did an end run to the left, into the woods.
    Virgil didn’t like it: there’d be some dead people for sure, if they pushed Slibe. He drove as far as he could, but well to the right of the others, got out of the truck and on the radio.
    “Your people are crashing into the woods. If he decides to fight, he’ll kill some of them,” Virgil said. “They gotta let him move before they do. They gotta calm down, or he’s going to hunker down somewhere and ambush them.”
    “Gotcha. I think they’ve got a good idea where he went, they’re just keeping him moving.”
    “They’re moving too fast, way too fast,” Virgil said. “If he’s got that rifle—”
    “Gotcha.”

    VIRGIL THOUGHT, Dumbass .
    The sheriff hadn’t struck him as a dumbass, but the chase was hot and he was caught up in it. Cops watch movies like everybody else, and sometimes, it gets them killed.
    Virgil pumped three shells into the shotgun, put the rest in his pocket, and jogged over to the fence, did a leg lift over it, careful not to get snagged, and headed through the woods. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, but he’d know it when he saw it.
    There was no high land nearby, but there was