Storm Front

siren still wailing, Virgil took the truck to within a hundred yards of the trees, then stopped, killed the siren, jumped out of the truck, shouted at Yael to “stay there!”, got his vest and his M16 out of the lockbox in the back, slapped a magazine into the gun and put another under his belt line, ran into the roadside ditch and then started running through the weeds toward the trees.
    The ditch was wet, so he moved left, and ran along the slope of it. He heard no shooting, nothing but the siren still wailing behind him.
    Fifty yards from the tree line, he slowed down, looking for any kind of movement; saw nothing. He dropped into a crouch and moved forward, stopping, listening, although his hearing hadn’t yet recovered from the screaming siren.
    Twenty-five yards out, he knelt and crawled for a way through the thick weeds, then sat and listened some more. Nothing but silence, and the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes.
    He waited another half-minute, then started the slow approach. At the tree line, he crossed the fence he’d been crawling parallel to and stepped back into the woods. The aerial photos he’d looked at the night before had shown the cabin perhaps a hundred yards ahead, but he could see almost nothing in the tangle of trees and brush.
    He waited, then moved, slowly, still hunting—avoided a nasty-looking patch of shiny green poison ivy—the muzzle of the M16 leading the way. Fifty yards into the trees, he’d seen or heard nothing at all.
    Another ten yards and the road twisted to the left, and as he rounded the turn on the inside of the track, he saw the cabin; the visible windows were shattered.
    He stopped, listened for another few seconds, then shouted, “Anybody there? Police. Anybody there?”
    He heard, in reply, a weak, “Help . . .”
    “Who is that?” he shouted.
    He heard, “Me. Jones. They’re gone. I heard them go.”
    All right. Virgil thought he understood that. Still, it could be a trap.
    “Are you okay?” he shouted. He’d wait for backup, if he could.
    “I’ve been shot.”
    “I’m coming,” Virgil shouted back. “But I’m coming slow. I have a machine gun. If you or anybody else tries to shoot me, if I see a gun, I’ll mow down the whole goddamn forest.”
    “I got an empty gun, but that’s all,” the man’s voice said.
    Virgil moved in, tree by tree, always looking for something from another direction, listening. When he got close to the cabin, he could see that the front door was closed but the windows were all shattered, and he could see what looked like fresh broken wood across the front wall of the place.
    Bullet holes.
    The cabin was surrounded by a small open space, half grass, half dirt. A Toyota Corolla sat at the far end of the opening. Virgil had to make a move sooner or later: he called, “My backup will be here in a minute. We’re cutting off this whole field. You’ll have to wait another couple of minutes.”
    “Don’t make me wait too long or I’ll be dead,” the man said. “I’m bleeding pretty good.”
    Virgil made his move, bolting from the cover of the tree, across ten or twelve yards of the clearing, and up onto the porch.
    The man inside laughed. “You were lying about waiting. You might as well come on in. Door’s unlocked. I got nothing left.”
    Virgil risked a peek at the window to the left of the front door and saw the top two-thirds of Jones’s body protruding from behind a heavy kitchen table, which had been overturned to provide some protection. Jones was lying on his side, more facedown than faceup. Virgil could see his hands, and his hands were empty.
    “I’m pointing an M16 at you. If you show a gun, you’re gonna find out what a real hosing is all about.”
    “Are you gonna come in here and help me, or are you going to stand there and bullshit?” Jones asked.
    Virgil went inside. Jones showed a trail of blood on the floor behind him, and as Virgil stepped through the door, he pushed a revolver across the floorboards toward Virgil’s feet. “Nothing left in it,” he said, “So I hope you really are the police.”
    “I am,” Virgil said. “Don’t move.”
    He patted Jones down, picked up some blood off his pants, wiped it on the back of Jones’s jacket. “Do you know where you’re hit?”
    “In the hip. On the side. The hip that’s up in the air.”
    Virgil asked, “Do you have a knife?”
    “There’re a couple of kitchen knives on the counter.”
    Virgil got a paring knife, came back and