He opened the patio door.
Hutch paused under the motel's eaves. He would have to reach out to the metal gutter along the roof's edge, drop away from the wall, and pull himself up. The soldier from the bathroom was still looking the other direction, covering his partner who had stepped into the woods.
Nothing good would come from waiting, so he just did it. Hanging from the gutter, he felt exposed. With the optical aids he was sure the soldiers possessed, he would be impossible to miss if either one glanced his way. He wanted to swing his leg up, hook his heel on the gutter. He imagined the sound that would make and opted instead to pull himself straight up using only arm strength. He rose over the gutters and folded his torso onto the roof.
The roof was pitched to a center peak. The asphalt tiles were gritty with pebbles; he wouldn't slide off. He could not see the soldier protruding from the bathroom window, but he had a direct line of sight to the one coming out of the woods. That meant Hutch was equally visible to himâmore so, considering the helmet's technology. But the soldier did not act alarmed. He simply continued his pursuit of whatever he had seen in the woods. He appeared to be casually strolling along the tree line, heading in Hutch's direction.
Maybe a ruse
, Hutch thought.
Waiting to get closer before he shoots.
Perhaps the soldier had already informed his teammate of Hutch's location. Since Hutch could no longer see the man in the window, he couldn't know if he was still there or sneaking around the front to box him in.
He tugged the pistol out of his waistband. Something on it caught on his pants. The gun came out of his hand. It hit the roof, clanged into the gutter, and flipped over the edge.
By the woods, the soldier's helmeted face snapped up to Hutch. The man started to swing his rifle around, but the soldier in the bathroom window must have still been there, and responded more quickly: right where the pistol had disappeared, bullets ripped through the gutter. They tore it into shreds, then began punching through the asphalt tiles. They marched up the roof toward Hutch.
He thought he was farther away from the edge than the width of the eaves, but he wasn't going to hang around to find out. He was scampering up toward the peak when bullets tore into the roof all around him. He glanced to see muzzle flashes from the soldier by the woods. As he rolled over the peak, he saw a second soldierâthe man from the bathroomâbackpedaling across the firebreak, trying to get a better aim.
Good,
Hutch thought,
if he's there, then he's not out front.
. . . And he wasn't in the room to shoot at him through the ceiling. The two soldiers would have to either climb back through a bathroom window or race around the building. Either way bought Hutch some time.
Give me a minute . . . thirty seconds . . . twenty.
He'd take
any
amount of time right nowâand he'd make the most of it. Dying here was not an option. Something was happening back home. His son was in danger. Macie. Dillon. Laura. It didn't matter that he might be in a worse situation than they were. He had to reach them. Help them. He had to
know
.
He stood and began a stuttering, controlled descent to the front edge of the roof. The shooting behind him stopped. He thought of the grenade, wondered if that was coming next.
He listened for its thump against the roof. What he heard was a car engine turning over and over, trying to start. A flash of red caught his eyeâthe same glowing trees that had alerted him to Mr. Mustang's presence. And there he was now, behind the wheel, his eyes big in the glow of the dome lamp because he hadn't bothered to shut the door.
Hutch knew one soldier, probably both, would be coming around that way any second. He waved both arms at Jim. The engine caught, and the car lurched forward. Its rear tires spun on gravel, then found the traction it needed to shoot across the parking lot. The driver's door slammed shut.
“Hey!” Hutch yelled, waving.
Jim didn't see him up on the roof.
He should have jumped down, but it was too late now. “Hey! Jim!”
The Mustang was angling toward the county road that ran in front of the motel. It braked hard and stopped. Jim's face appeared in the passenger window. He was leaning over to look up at Hutch.
Hutch beckoned to him, but he would not have blamed Jim for speeding off. The backup lights came on. The Mustang moved as fast in reverse as it had when it was leaving the parking lot. Hutch grabbed hold of the gutter, swung down, and dropped. He had to jump to keep from being nailed by the car's rear bumper. Jim opened the passenger door, and he jumped in.
“Go! Go!” Hutch said. “They're coming!”
Jim punched it and crossed the parking lot diagonally, building speed.
The van seemed to come out of nowhere. It pulled into the Mustang's path and stopped. A black-helmeted soldier looked out the driver's side window at them.
Jim slammed on the brakes. Hutch was able to yell only “Don'tâ!” before flying into the dash. He pushed himself back and said, “Don't stop! Go around! Go around!”
Jim looked dazed, wide-eyed and slack jawed.
They were thirty feet from the side of the van. The driver jumped out. He had his machine gun aimed at the windshield before Hutch's mind registered the weapon.
“Go!” he yelled again.
The windshield spiderwebbed as holes opened up in it.
The Mustang shot forward. Hutch caught a glimpse of Jim's crazy-scared face. He braced his arms against the dash. The broken windshield made the gunman appear fragmented, as though he were not one but hundreds, shooting at them.
The car slammed into the shooter and van. The impact shattered the windshield completely. Pellets of safety glass, like drops of water, cascaded over Hutch. His arms buckled, and his forehead struck the dash. He squinted one eye through the windshield opening. The soldier slumped over the crumpled hood. Steam hissed out, making the body appear to be smoldering. Hutch's other eye was gone. He wiped at it and realized it was only blood from a cut in his brow.
A raspy hiss came from Jim. He was slumped against the door, blood on his face, more on his chest. Hutch grabbed his shoulder. “Jim, we gotta go.” He looked beyond the injured man to the side of the motel. The soldiers had not yet appeared. He knew they would be there any second.
“Jim?”
The only response was a wheezing breath in, a gurgling breath out.
Hutch saw blood growing on the man's shirt. It wasn't pouring from his head as Hutch had first thought. He yanked Jim's shirt aside, popping buttons. A bullet had struck him midchest.
“Jim.”
Hutch had to shoulder his door open. He ran around and opened Jim's, and caught the man as he fell out. The small window behind the door shattered. Apparently the soldiers had made it around to the front of the motel, but Hutch didn't have time to look.
He pulled Jim out of the car and dragged him to the front. Either the van had slid away or the Mustang had bounced back, but three feet separated the front of the Mustang from the side of the van. The collision had damaged the larger vehicle's sheet metal behind the driver's door. Hutch lifted Jim in, letting him fall between the front captain's chairs.
A bullethole appeared in the windshield, then another. One soldier was running toward them from the side of the motel. Another from Hutch's room.
Hutch slammed the transmission into drive, cranked the wheel right, and stepped on it. The van spun away from the gunmen. Its tires bumped up onto the county road. He almost careened off the other side, but got control in time to steer it back into a lane. As he accelerated past the motel sign, a rear window shattered. Bullets plunked into the back and side. They kept striking the van for a lot longer than Hutch would have imagined. Finally the barrage stopped, and the light of the sign was a firefly in his rearview mirror.
With the soldier draped over her shoulders like a shawl, Laura stepped off the patio and onto the backyard grass. Macie stopped in front of her.
“What about the car?” the girl said.
The weight of the soldier was already cramping Laura's shoulders and numbing her right arm. She considered turning him around to put the bulk of his weight to the other shoulder, but juggling him back and forth every couple minutes wasn't practical. She decided to tough it out a little longer.
“It's in the garage on the other side of the house,” she whispered. “The other soldiers are looking for us. We can't risk getting to it.”
“But where are we going?” Macie said.
“Just . . . away. And, honey, I know we have to get Logan. That's step two, and we're only on step one.”
She wasn't happy about it, but Macie said, “Okay.”
They were halfway to the back fence when Dillon grabbed her arm. He said, “Mom, listen!”
All she could hear was her own heavy breathing. “What is it?”
“A siren.”
Then she heard it. It was getting louder. She could see the street in the space between houses. A streetlight shined on the blacktop, sidewalk, and some of the yard.
Here
, she thought, willing the emergency vehicle to them.
We need you here!
She didn't understand how they would know to come, though. The gunfire had been quieted by some kind of silencer. Maybe a neighbor had seen Logan being carried away or heard the breaking of the entryway window. For whatever reason, the sirens did seem to be approaching. She felt hope, a surge of energy. Whoever had taken Logan was probably waiting in a vehicle for the other man inside. They would all be apprehended. Logan would be freed. She started toward the side yard, toward the street.
“See, Macie? It's going to be okay.”
The siren grew louder. She could hear the car's engine now. Red and blue lights flashed across the house across the street. Then the cruiser flew past her narrow vision of the street. Tires squealed.
“Come on,” she said. “Dillon, Macie, come on.”
The cruiser's engine revved, and the car backed into view. A police officer in the passenger seat watched them. He was speaking into a microphone. The driver leaned forward to look.
She waved, lost her balance, and staggered sideways. She laughed in relief. A shot rang out. Then another and another, fast. Machine-gun fire. The windshield started to smoke. Laura realized it was glass dust, kicked up by the bullets striking it. The windshield shattered, followed by the driver's-side glass. The policeman spasmed. Blood flew.
She backed away in horror. Hutch's daughter darted ahead, either not seeing the destruction or not understanding its significance.
“Macie!” Laura said. “Get back here. Dillon, get her.”
Dillon rushed to her. He grabbed the back of her collar and tugged.
Macie screamed.
Dillon cupped his hand over her mouth. He stepped around so she could see his face. He said, “Shhh.”
The cop on the driver's side opened his door and disappeared from Laura's view. He rose, extended a gun, and fired at the front of the house. Bullets tore into the cruiser. The right front tire popped. The door-glass next to him shattered. A headlamp exploded. There were too many bullets without cease to be coming from only one gun or one place.
Macie nodded at Dillon, and he removed his hand from her mouth.
“Hurry,” Laura said. She jerked her head toward the backyard.
Dillon led Macie past his mother. Laura followed. The boy on her shoulders seemed to have gained fifty pounds. Her knees wanted to collapse under the weight. She knew the feeling came not only from the fatigue of carrying him, but mostly from her dashed hopes and the shock of witnessing the cop's murder.
When they'd reached the backyard again, she said, “Wait, wait. Let's go get the car.”
Macie looked puzzled. “But you said . . .”
Laura hefted the body on her shoulders. There was no getting comfortable with it. “The bad guys are busy out front. Let's go.”
They trudged through the yard, past the rear of the house. At the living room windows, Laura paused. She leaned close to a pane. She could see through the living room to the front door, which was open. They had moved the dead soldier from the hall to the entryway, just inside the front door. She wondered how badly the absence of the soldier she carried screwed up their SOP. She guessed that they'd have hightailed it out of there after the first cops arrived, but they couldn't leave without all their members.
The gunfire out front stopped. A few seconds later, a single shot rang out.
Dillon jumped. He found his mother's face, looking for reassurance.
“You're doing great, Dillon,” she said.
They passed the kitchen and finally the eating area. It was from these windows that Laura had seen the man carry Logan away. She stopped. “Just a sec.”
Dillon said, “Are you tired?”
“Yeah, I need a moment to breathe.” But that wasn't it. She remembered Logan's kicking feet disappearing around the next corner. What if they had not kidnapped him, but murdered him? His body might be right there in front of the garage. She could not lead Macie and Dillon into that nightmare.
She dropped to one knee, leaned, and let the soldier slide off her shoulder. Her physical relief was immediate, but her mind ached at the possibility of Logan's death.
The soldier moaned.
The three of them watched him, but he didn't wake or even move.
Dillon squatted and pushed at the man with his fingers. He whispered to his mother, “You knocked him a good one.”
“He'll live.” She rubbed her shoulders. Standing, she said, “I'm going around the corner. Wait here.”
Panic twisted his face. “Can we all go?”
“I want to check it out first. Make sure there are no bad guys. I can do that better alone.”
He frowned.
She touched his cheek. “I'll be right back.”