Heard a shot behind him, must’ve gone wild . . . and he had the
crowd in front of him, if they kept shooting, they’d be shooting into a crowd . . .
Ran as hard as he could. More cops ahead. He dodged into the horse barn, and
ran
. . .
—
LUCAS TURNED THE CORNER
and saw the cops on the ground, a few shocked spectators standing, twisting, trying to see where the danger might be, a man picking up his young son and running away, running in the same direction that Cole had gone, another man, then two, with iPhones overhead, making movies . . . people screaming and running . . .
Lucas dropped to his knees next to the wounded cops and shouted into the radio, “We got two men down, two men down behind the big brown building with the dome, by the barns. We need an ambulance here right now! Right now!”
One of the cops said to him, “I think it busted my leg, but Danny’s bleeding bad, bad . . .”
The other cop groaned, “Shot me in the balls, shot me in the balls . . .”
He was holding his groin and Lucas dropped the radio and the .45 and pulled the cop’s hands away and said, “Let me look, let me look . . .”
The cop hadn’t been shot in the balls, but on an inner thigh and was leaking blood ferociously. Lucas clapped his hand over the wound and with the other hand, picked up the radio and shouted, “We’ve got an artery here, we’ve got an artery, we need somebody here right now, goddamnit, get me some help . . .”
To the cop, he said, “Your balls are fine.”
A woman came out of the crowd and said, “I’m a nurse, let me look, let me see it . . .”
Lucas pulled his hand off and the woman said, “Okay, we need lots of pressure, lots of pressure . . .”
She jammed her hand against the wound and the cop screamed and said, “Don’t, don’t,” and the woman said, “Got to,” and the cop cried, “It hurts bad, it hurts bad . . .”
No ambulance, no siren . . .
Lucas was screaming into the radio, realized that somebody was talking, and another woman broke out of the crowd and dropped next to the other wounded cop and said, “Let me see, let me see . . .”
Lucas: “You a nurse?”
“Yes, physical therapist,” and to the cop, “Let me see where you’re bleeding.”
Lucas stood up and saw an ambulance lurching toward them, moving too slowly, too tentatively, and he waved his arms, and then shouted to the crowd, “Everybody wave, everybody wave, get the ambulance over here . . .”
People started waving and the ambulance veered toward them and Lucas said, “I gotta go, gotta go . . .”
He picked up his .45 and shouted, “Did anyone see which way the soldier went?” and a bearded fat man in a Hawkeye shirt shouted back, “He went in the horse barn. The soldier guy went in the barn . . .”
Lucas ran that way and said into the radio, “He’s in the horse barn. He went in the horse barn . . .”
—
LUCAS RAN INTO
the entrance to the horse barn, saw people running away from the door, but a few standing, staring, and he shouted, “Which way did the soldier go? Which way . . . He’s not a soldier, he’s shot some cops . . .”
One man tentatively pointed toward the far end of the barn and Lucas ran that way. He could hear people calling on the radio but had no time to listen.
At the end of the barn he peered across a narrow street. An exit gate was down to his left, the entrance to another barn across the way. No sign of Purdy. He looked down to his left again, saw a guard at the gate peering at him. He ran that way, and the guard shouted, “I’m unarmed, I’m unarmed . . .”
Lucas shouted back, “I’m a cop. Did you see a guy in fatigues?”
“He went there,” the guard shouted. “Through there, into the swine barn.”
Lucas ran that way, pressed the alert button on the radio, called, “This is Davenport. He’s in the swine barn. Get some people here, but be careful, he’ll kill you . . . he’s a good shot, he’ll kill you . . .”
—
COLE RAN INTO
the south side of the swine barn, pulling off his fatigue jacket as he went. People were looking at him, but he didn’t care, it was the cops he was worried about, they’d be calling on their radios about a man in fatigues. He threw the jacket and his army hat into a pigpen and ran on, holding the gun next to his thigh.
He looked back, saw nobody after him, stopped, caught his breath,
walked
out the exit and across a narrow street into the cow barn. As he did, he looked to his left and saw three cops running toward the scene of the shooting, running away from him.
Had a chance, had a chance . . .
Kept walking. Had to get out of the fatigue pants . . .
He tucked the gun under one armpit and called Marlys. She came up and said, “I heard shots . . .”
“That was me, I’m okay, I can’t come up there, you gotta pull the trigger. I got guys after me. I’m down in the cow barn . . .”
As he said it he was coming up to the exit of the barn and a man in a civilian shirt and tan slacks came through the door, mouth open, breathing hard, checked around . . . gun held chin high, ready to fire. Cole was coming up to him and shot him in the chest and ran on when the man went down, out of the barn, slowed again, walking again now, not running, not catching the eye . . .
—
LUCAS WAS IN THE SWINE BARN
when he heard the gunshot ahead, but muffled, not in the barn, maybe outside . . .
He shouted into the radio, “Another shot, this is Davenport, got another shot outside the pig barn.”
He ran toward the exit and saw people running out of the cow barn, where he’d been earlier that morning, and he shouted into the radio, “This is Davenport, he’s in the cow barn, cow barn . . .”
He ran across the street into the cow barn, saw a crowd of people milling around the opposite exit, ran that way, and when people saw him coming, they began to run away: his gun, but he couldn’t
help that, and as he came up he shouted, “Where did he go? Where did the soldier go?”
Several people pointed and then Lucas saw two men hunched over a figure on the ground with a gun beside him, and he saw that man was shot and he shouted into the radio, “Got another man down in the cow barn, in the cow barn, need an ambulance . . .”
Lucas ran out of the barn and shouted, “Where did the soldier go?” and a man behind him shouted, “Hey, cop! Cop!”
Lucas turned and the man yelled, “He took off his camo shirt and hat. He’s wearing a white T-shirt now.”
Lucas shouted, “Where did he go?”
The man pointed to his right and Lucas ran that way. And saw, a hundred yards away, a tall, thin man walking fast, white T-shirt and camo pants and yellow desert combat boots, and ran after him, trying to keep only Purdy’s head in sight while he hid himself in the twisting running crowds of people at the barns . . .
Into the radio he said, “Davenport—got a cop shot bad in the cow barn, gotta get an ambulance, Purdy is walking east toward the art show place, he’s wearing a white T-shirt and fatigue pants, need more guys going that way, he might be heading for the campgrounds, need guys with guns at campground gates.”
Lucas was closing in on Cole, but the crowd was thinning out and he wouldn’t stay hidden much longer.
—
COLE WAS RUNNING
for the campground gates. Once there, in the welter of campers and RVs and trucks and cars and tents, he could hide and even hijack a truck out of the place, but first he had to get
through the gate before the cops figured out where he was. He glanced back and saw a man in a straw cowboy hat looking at him, pacing him, but fifty yards back, talking into a cell phone, and he realized he’d seen the man near the barn and that the man was following him, probably talking to 911.
Had to run. Not far now.
He began walking faster, looked back again . . .
Saw Davenport, coming fast, still sixty or seventy yards back.
Now he did have to run. He broke into a sprint, running right at the gate, and saw a big man in a dark uniform come through the gate with a gun. The man pointed the gun at him and fired, and missed, and Cole fired a shot at him and the man jumped back, behind a phone pole, and Cole realized he wouldn’t be able to force his way out and he turned left and ran across the horseshoe courts along a fence line toward the next gate.
Saw a man in a John Deere Gator pull around the corner of a building, look right at him, jump out of the Gator, pull a gun. Too far away to take down yet, Cole thought. He swerved . . . and was hit in the hip by a gunshot from behind.
Going down.
Got back up, dragging his leg, into the shelter of some kind of museum. The leg was bleeding bad, the pain was crawling all the way up to his shoulder . . .
Looked back and saw the guard in the dark uniform and Davenport coming, realized he had to move . . . or give up.
He moved, one last spurt: if he could get past the guy with the Gator and get through the gate behind him, still had a chance. He brought the gun up and fired three wild shots at Davenport and
the guard, who went down to the turf, not hit, but getting ready to open up on him . . .
If the guy with the Gator was still there, and he could get to him, he could ride the Gator out . . .
He dodged around the corner of the building, away from Davenport and the guard, before they could fire at him . . .
And the guy from the Gator was right there, ten feet away. A half dozen 9mm bullets crashed through Cole’s chest, and the world went away, dissolving in a bruised purple light, and then nothing at all . . .
—
GREER WAS STANDING OVER
Cole Purdy’s body when Lucas and the guard got to them and Greer was looking shaky and Lucas looked down at Purdy, who was lying on his back, gray eyes open to the hot sun, but already gone dull and blank. Blood spotted the front of his T-shirt, which was pulled tight over his chest: Greer had shot him six times, all the shots in the space of two hands, including two through Purdy’s heart.
Lucas clapped him on the back and asked, “You okay?”
Greer said, “I think so,” but then dropped his gun, muzzle-down, into the dirt, and almost fell when he reached down to pick it up. Lucas picked it up for him, pulled the magazine and ejected a round from the chamber, handed the mag and the cartridge to Greer, and said, “Put these in your pocket,” and then passed him the empty gun.
He reached for his radio, but it was gone. He’d dropped it back when Purdy fired at him and it was still there, on the ground. He
asked Greer if he had a radio, and Greer nodded and handed it to him, and Lucas said into the radio, “Davenport—Purdy is down. Purdy is shot and down. We’re by some gate . . .”
“Behind the museum by Gate Four,” the guard said.
Lucas repeated that.
“Gotta get an ambulance,” Greer blurted.
“Not right away. He’s gone, man,” Lucas said. He handed the radio back to Greer. “We need ambulances at the other places, we don’t want one here if it pulls it away from somewhere else.”
“Okay, okay,” Greer said.
“Really, really dead,” said the guard. And, “I think I shot him, too.”
“You did,” Lucas said. “I think you hit him in the butt—that stopped him. Hell of a shot.”
Greer had broken into a heavy sweat, looked like he might faint: “How many guys did he hurt?”
Lucas said, “Three. At least three. All cops . . . man, you did so good. Listen, we . . .” He was suddenly aware of the distant sound of a band playing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and said, “Is that the march? Are they marching?”
“Yeah. It was about to start when you spotted Purdy . . .”
More cops were running up and a squad car pulled in. Within a minute or so there were cops everywhere, and Lucas slipped his .45 back in its holster and said, “We’ve still got to find Marlys.”
“I don’t think she has a gun,” Greer said. “We found that .357—”
“I better get over there, though,” Lucas said. “You gotta stay here and sort this out. If I could borrow your John Deere . . .”
“Sure,” Greer said. He waved at the Gator. “It’s still running.”
—
LUCAS JOGGED
forty or fifty yards over to the vehicle, figured out the shift, and shifted it into gear and turned it around and almost ran into a fire hydrant.
Then he had to figure out how the reverse worked and he backed up, and as he did, noticed that he was sitting on bright corn-kernel-yellow seats with that dark green cornstalk color of the machine itself, and on the other side of the hood was the light pastel green and yellow of the fire hydrant.
And he still had those two big nuts in his pocket that he’d picked up from the Purdys’ barn workshop, the one with the green-and-yellow overspray on the floor, a green-and-yellow spray that didn’t match the hard green and yellow of the John Deere, but did match the green and yellow of fair fire hydrants . . . and those nuts in his pocket. Why would you need a whole bag of big nuts, but no bolts?
You wouldn’t—unless they were shrapnel.
And that nagging intuition he’d had by the Varied Industries building: he’d been walking by fire hydrants all morning, the same yellow and green as the overspray on the Purdys’ barn floor.
A bomb.
The Purdys had built a bomb. The farm kid who’d been brain-injured by IEDs in Iraq had built himself an IED.
A bomb disguised as a fire hydrant that was probably standing on the Concourse, right where the candidates would be marching by, right on the curb.
He no longer had a radio. He turned and looked at Greer,
couldn’t see him in the cluster of cops . . . He screamed, “Greer! Greer! It’s a bomb! It’s a bomb!”
And he put the Gator into gear and wheeled it onto the closest street and accelerated down toward the sound of the band, and thanked God he’d done the tour that morning and knew where he was going, in fact right down a feeder street to the Concourse . . .
He fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket as he went, hoping against hope that Greer had understood him, and he speed-dialed Neil Mitford, who answered, but when Lucas shouted at him, said, barely intelligibly, “I can’t hear a fuckin’ thing over these bands, Lucas.”
Lucas thought,
Shit
, dropped the phone, and tried to make the Gator go faster, but it was going as fast as it could, which wasn’t a lot faster than he could run . . .