Red Cap spoke, loud enough for LaRouche to hear. "Yes," he sobbed. "I will."

The Tall Man straightened. "Good."

Red Cap leaned forward, reaching for something. LaRouche couldn't see what it was, so he stood up behind the tree, trying to gain a better vantage point.

There was a body on the ground. Not dead, LaRouche realized as it moved. It was lashed to a two-by four, the beam stretched across its back and extending a foot past each hand. Coils of some sort of cordage LaRouche could not identify bound the man to the beam at his wrists and at his shoulders.

Red Cap picked something up off the ground.

The man on the beam began to shake his head. He struggled against his bindings. "Come on, man! Don't do this!"

"I'm sorry," Red Cap's words were detached. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Please! Steven! Think about what you're doing!"

"Just...be quiet," Red Cap begged the other man.

"Don't do it!"

"Be quiet!"

"Please don't do it!"

Red Cap raised his hands and LaRouche could see what he'd picked up. A long nail and a heavy mallet. Red Cap set the nail to the other man's wrist. He did it quick, nervous. Scared of what he was about to do. He raised the hammer above his head, his face contorting, and he swung down hard. The sound of metal striking metal. And then screams.

LaRouche was not given any time to think. Abruptly, Wilson charged forward through the trees, firing his rifle. The percussion of gunshots slapped the side of LaRouche's face, branches twirling and chipping off of trees, and The Tall Man stumbled, his right leg blooming red. His face bore a look of surprise, and then it was gone, his entire face just disappeared into red muck.

Wilson's shots were wild after that, striking trees and dirt and pavement. One of the guards took a bullet to the chest and pitched backward, and then one of the captives behind him received the next two bullets. The other captives either hit the ground, or started running for the woods, away from the sound of gunfire. The three remaining guards all reacted differently. One tried to grab some of the captives as they ran. The second dove for cover behind the pickup truck. The third just stood there in the road, his rifle raised, but without any idea as to what he should be shooting at.

LaRouche hauled himself out from behind the tree, pulled his rifle up and sighted down the barrel. The guard that stood in the middle of the road suddenly fixated on him and began firing. LaRouche watched the muzzle flashes, the puffs of gray smoke bursting out at him. For some reason he didn't register the sound of the shots, but he could see the branches splitting all around him as the rounds pa.s.sed within inches of him.

He cringed, pulled his trigger as fast as he could, and prayed to G.o.d, Please kill him before he kills me! Please kill him before he kills me!

Something nipped him in the side.

He looked down, seeing only torn fabric low on his left hip. No blood.

When he looked back up the man he'd been shooting at was slumped in the middle of the road. The man screamed and stared down at his opened belly. LaRouche sighted again and fired twice more. Slow, even, well-aimed shots. The first hit the man in the upper chest and knocked him back. LaRouche couldn't tell where the second shot hit, but he saw the body jerk and then lay still.

LaRouche ran for the road. There were bodies on the ground, men running and screaming, men tied to two-by-fours struggling to their feet, trying to escape. The two remaining guards huddled on the pa.s.senger side of the pickup truck, trying to use it as cover. One of them stuck his rifle out and fired blindly over the bed, the rounds hurtling off harmlessly into the woods. The second scrambled for the pa.s.senger door, ripping it open and diving inside.

LaRouche ran for the truck. To his left he could hear Lucky screaming at the top of his lungs, "Get outta the truck! Get outta the truck!" but the guard didn't listen. Lucky's rifle cracked a half-dozen times, the bullets punching neat holes through the sheet metal door. LaRouche fired along with him. One-two-three, and painted the inner windshield red.

The other guard went for the cab of the pickup, only to find his comrade killed. Lucky fired a barrage at him, but the engine block soaked up most of what he gave out. The hood of the pickup rumpled and flexed as round after round struck it. The windshield turned abruptly opaque, run through with a million tiny cracks, then began to collapse.

Lucky's gun went dry. He looked down at it and didn't seem to know what to do with it. He stood in the middle of the street, less than ten yards from the front of the pickup truck and began fumbling with his gun like he no longer knew what it was.

LaRouche wanted to yell at Lucky to get his f.u.c.king gun up, to quit f.u.c.king with the thing and reload it. But there wasn't time. And he knew that if he said it, it would only distract Lucky further and take precious seconds away from him. So LaRouche cut right, flanking around the back-end of the pickup truck.

He heard two shots just before he cleared the tailgate.

LaRouche cleared the back-end just as the shooter threw his rifle down and began running for the woods. LaRouche's jaw clamped down. He raised his rifle to shoot, aiming for the running man's back. His finger touched the trigger, but then suddenly Wilson was in his sight picture, tearing after the man on foot. The man kept running and looking behind him as Wilson gained on him. Fear in his eyes.

LaRouche pulled his rifle off the target. Wilson would handle that motherf.u.c.ker.

He turned to his left and jogged around the front of the car. "Lucky?" he called out. "You okay, bro?"

Lucky was still in the middle of the road. Down on one knee. His face pinched in intense focus. He didn't seem to register LaRouche calling out to him. He was still trying to grab the magazine, but it was like his entire body rebelled against him. His fingers kept sliding off the magazine like he was unable to produce the grip required to pull it from his pouch.

"s.h.i.t..." LaRouche felt numb. He looked at the other man, saw the blooms of red spreading across the front of his jacket.

Lucky finally got his fingers around the magazine and ripped it from its pouch. Then he began stubbornly trying to seat it in the mag-well, almost oblivious to the wounds in his midsection. Like he refused to acknowledge it. Like something in him had just decided that if he got his gun reloaded, everything would be okay.

"Lucky!" LaRouche slung his rifle and ran for him. "Talk to me, Lucky!"

Whether from shock or rapid loss of blood pressure, or just the dangerous blast of adrenaline, Lucky was losing his fine motor skills, including the ability to speak clearly. He spoke through clenched teeth. Sounded like his mouth was full of marbles. "I'm fine...'m okay...think 'm okay..."

Lucky managed to get the magazine into the well. He slammed it up until it clicked, but never charged the next round. He raised the rifle weakly and began pulling the trigger, though LaRouche wasn't sure what he thought he was going to shoot at. Lucky frowned at the rifle when it didn't fire.

"Shi's not workin'," he mumbled.

Then he tilted unsteadily and stumbled into the bullet-riddled hood of the truck.

LaRouche grabbed him by the shoulder so he wouldn't fall over. "You're hit, man, put the rifle down."

Even leaning against the truck, Lucky tried to get the rifle up to sight through, his mouth hanging slack as he very deliberately closed one eye. "No...I'ma f.u.c.kin' kill 'im, Sarge. I gottem."

LaRouche took the rifle out of his hands and it wasn't until the weapon left his grip that Lucky seemed to realize what had happened. His eyes became wide and concerned and his hands fluttered to his belly. He looked down, saw the holes in his jacket and touched them gingerly with trembling fingers.

"Oh no. Oh no."

"It's okay, Buddy. Calm down." LaRouche slipped his arm under Lucky's and righted the sagging man. "Come on with me. Come with me. One foot in front of the other."

But Lucky was transfixed by his wounds. "He shot me!" he said, indignantly. "a.s.shole shot me! He shot me, Sarge." Lucky looked drunkenly at LaRouche. "D'you see it? D'you see 'im shoot me? f.u.c.kin' a.s.shole..."

LaRouche strained as he half walked, half dragged his burden to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate, trying to move as quickly as possible. "Don't worry about that s.h.i.t now, okay, Buddy? Wilson's gonna beat the f.u.c.king s.h.i.t outta that guy for you. So you just relax."

Lucky nodded. "Gon' rela.s.s...i's not that bad, is it?"

"No, it's not bad."

"Feels bad."

"No, you'll be okay."

Lucky shook his head, irritably. "Sarge, I did ever'thin' I was s'posed to do. I did all my tactical stuff. I can't believe this s.h.i.t. f.u.c.kin' can't believe I got shot."

LaRouche grunted as he hefted Lucky's b.u.t.t up onto the tailgate and then laid the man down. "You're doin' good, man. Just keep talkin' to me while I check you out." He shrugged his backpack off and slid it into the truck bed, then climbed in himself. Huddled over the wounded man, he pulled the shoulder bag of magazines off, unzipped the jacket and pulled up Lucky's fleece sweater.

Two holes-one just inside his right hip bone, and the other a few inches below his left nipple. He rolled Lucky partially on his side, fought to get the jacket and shirt up, and saw two exit wounds. They roughly matched the holes on the front, but it looked like the bullets had entered at an angle. The bullet that had struck him below the left nipple had exited out his side and looked the least dangerous. The one just inside his right hip had exited close to his spine.

LaRouche stared at the exit wounds, ragged and almost black. The wound in his upper torso might not have hit anything important, but the one through his gut most certainly had. There was no imaginary line that LaRouche could draw between the entry and exit wounds that didn't result in the pulverization of something vital.

Lucky yammered on as LaRouche tried to think: "This's just stupid. This's all jus' f.u.c.kin' stupid. I jus' wanted to put in my thirty years at the shop an' retire. Tha's all I wanted. Tha's all I wanted. I didn't wanna do this s.h.i.t. I never wanted to do this s.h.i.t." His face tensed and he trailed off with a quiet moan. "Hey, Sarge...I's startin' to hurt."

"I know, Buddy," LaRouche began ripping open his backpack. "That just means it's not that bad. If it was bad, you wouldn't feel anything."

"Is that true?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know..."

"Of course it's true."

As LaRouche began pulling out bandages from the front pocket of his backpack, he registered the sounds around him and glanced back over his shoulder. One of the men that had been held captive was still alive, crawling on the ground and moaning. From the direction of the woods there was rustling and thrashing.

LaRouche looked up over the side of the pickup bed and into the woods, and found Wilson and Jim approaching, both with their hands on the man that had taken off running. The man who had shot Lucky. His face was covered in blood and lumpy in places, the beginnings of ma.s.sive, swollen bruises that would set in over the course of the next hour.

They stopped at the edge of the road, seeing Lucky lying there in the truck bed and knowing from the look on LaRouche's face that it wasn't good. Wilson's and Jim's faces became tense, like a tried man waiting for a verdict.

LaRouche began wiping away the excess blood around the wound.

His patient swatted weakly at the bandage and shook his head. "Stop. Just come here."

"What?"

Lucky reached forward and grabbed LaRouche by the arm and pulled him in close.

LaRouche pushed back. "Lucky, you gotta let me work!"

Lucky pulled at him harder. "Stop. Please...come here." He pulled LaRouche close again, and Lucky leaned his pale face into LaRouche's jacket as though he took comfort from it. The wounded man's eyes were wide and scared and he began to breathe rapidly and shallowly.

"Don't go anywhere," he told LaRouche. "Don't go anywhere."

LaRouche stayed still, let the man hold on to him. He couldn't do anything else, so he put an arm around Lucky, pulled him in. He looked at Wilson, then at Jim. Both of the men avoided his gaze. They looked off into the woods, then down to the road.

"It's okay, Buddy," LaRouche said. "I got you."

Lucky took three more hitching breaths and died.

LaRouche leaned back, let the dead men slide out of his arms, back onto the bed of the pickup. He put his hands on his hips and knelt there on his haunches. Took slow deep breaths against the burning, ratcheting feeling in his stomach.

Wilson and Jim stood there, still as stones. Their prisoner swayed on his feet between them and spit blood from his mouth. The air was very still, and seemed to have gotten colder for some reason, though the sun shined on them fully. On the street, amongst the bodies, the moaning survivor had ceased to move or make noise.

Wilson took a half step forward. His hand went up towards his head, then hesitated, balled into a fist, then dropped down to his side again. "He died?"

LaRouche nodded. "Yeah. He died."

"Oh, man," Wilson's face screwed up. "Oh, man...it's my fault."

"Shut up," LaRouche said.

Tears glimmered in Wilson's eyes now. "I shoulda waited. I wasn't thinking. I just...started shooting without planning anything or coordinating."

LaRouche slid off the tailgate and spat. "I said, 'shut the f.u.c.k up'."

Wilson closed his eyes, turned his head skyward.

LaRouche approached the prisoner, whose one open eye tracked him suspiciously, the other bulbous and turning purple. LaRouche stood an arm's length from the man and eyed him up and down, thinking, So this is one of the big, bad "Followers"? He was a short, unimpressive individual with shoulder-length blonde hair. He had a wiry body and a fidgety manner that LaRouche always found off-putting.

"He have anything on him?" LaRouche asked.

Wilson held up a pint-size, plastic bottle of whiskey. "Just this."

LaRouche took the bottle, hefted it in his hands. It was still full. He flipped it so he held the top of the bottle, and then abruptly swung it, smacking the prisoner in the face with it. It wasn't hard enough to do any real damage, but it made the man grunt in pain, and LaRouche thought about doing it again. Instead, he just rapped the man twice on the forehead with it. "Mine now."

He slipped the bottle in his back pocket and then reached forward and took the man by the face, thinking that he would only direct the man's gaze to where he wanted. But when his fingers touched the man's skin he suddenly felt his blood roaring and within a split second became enraged with the man-his stink, his bleeding, his lumpy, bruised face, and the very fact that he dared to be alive when Lucky was dead.

His grip tightened, causing the man to cry out and his mouth to mush inwards, pinched between LaRouche's bloodless fingers. He pulled the man in close and jerked his head to the right, forcing him to look at the pickup truck while he spoke into his ear, louder than necessary.

"You see that s.h.i.t? You see that man lying there?" LaRouche grated in the man's face. "You did that. To my f.u.c.king friend."

The man shook his head violently, getting his face free of LaRouche's vice-grip. Then he looked right in LaRouche's eyes, defiance blazing, and spoke with a thick northern accent: "Your dead friend interrupted the Lord's work. He got his. And you'll get yours."

LaRouche wanted murder. He grabbed the man by the shoulders, pulled him out of Jim's and Wilson's arms and shoved him to the ground. He wound back with his right boot and sent it solidly into the man's side, cracking ribs loud enough to be heard.

"LaRouche," Jim spoke up, raising a hand.

LaRouche either didn't hear him or ignored him completely. He kicked the man in the side again so the man curled up into the fetal position and began gasping for air, horrible rasping sounds. LaRouche bent down onto one knee, took the man by the collar, and began hammering his already bruised face with his fist. He got in three strikes and nearly knocked the man unconscious before Father Jim finally leapt in, seizing the upraised arm.

"LaRouche!" he shouted. "Knock it off!"

LaRouche looked up at him. "You got a f.u.c.kin' problem with this, Jim?"

The two stared at each other for a moment.

Then Jim nodded. "Yeah, I do."

LaRouche continued to stare up at his comrade for a long moment. Jim released his grip on LaRouche's arm. The man on the ground continued to cough and splutter and wail incoherently about his broken ribs.

Finally LaRouche just nodded. "Fine. Take the pickup and drive Lucky's body back to the others." He gave it another second's thought and then looked at the ground. "Wilson, go with him."

"I want to be here."

"Wilson!" LaRouche looked up at him sharply. "You've done enough for one f.u.c.kin' day! Just go with him!"

Wilson and Jim exchanged glances, both pained, but they stayed silent. They moved to the truck, closed the tailgate, pulled the dead driver out of the door, and kicked the shattered windshield out. LaRouche watched them, catching his breath. Then he forced his prisoner to his feet and guided him to the back of the van, opening the rear doors and manhandling him into the narrow s.p.a.ce between the backseat and the door stop. Then he shut the door, pinning the man in place.