Dead Run (8 page)

Jean was leaning forward in her seat, as if another inch closer to the windshield would make the reason for the peculiar roadblock perfectly clear. Her face was dewy with the heat, and her lips were folded in on each other in that slightly alarmed expression she always wore when something didn't make sense. "What are they? Soldiers?"

"Looks like. Probably Guard."

"What are they doing? Why do they have the road blocked off?" Her voice was rising up the scale as a seed of panic germinated, and Harold knew her imagination was already running wild, manufacturing improbable scenarios of tornadoes, floods, riots, and any of the other disasters that brought the National Guard out into the civilian world.

"Relax, honey." He laid a comforting hand on her knee. "They're just weekend warriors, and they've got to practice somewhere." But the truth was that he felt a little tickle of unease on the back of his own neck as one of the young men headed toward the driver's side of the truck. This one was fair and freckled and sporting a brand-new sunburn, but he had the bearing down pat: straight back, clipped movements, and that tucked chin you see only in the posture of a military man at attention. "Afternoon. What's up, soldier?"

The soldier stepped right up to Harold's open window, his rifle now casually at his side, and gave them a friendly nod. "Afternoon, sir, ma'am. I'm afraid the road's closed temporarily. We're detouring traffic up to County S-"

"What do you mean, the road's closed? Why?"

"Military maneuvers, sir. Your tax dollars at work."

Jean breathed a sigh of relief, then felt irritation rise to fill the empty space where panic had lived just a moment before. She'd been prepared to deal with catastrophe, but not inconvenience. She brushed a clump of damp blond curls from her forehead and started fanning her face with the Fleet Farm sale flyer. "What do you mean, military maneuvers?" she snapped at the young soldier, and Harold had to smile as the man's brows shot up in surprise, almost pitying him for being stupid enough to put a roadblock between Jean and her shower on the first day of her period. "We live on this road and there were no military maneuvers going on here when we left this morning."

Harold started to give the soldier an apologetic grin, but something in the man's face made his smile falter. The stoic, soldierly countenance was suddenly gone, replaced by a ripple of confusion and maybe even a little fear, and that made him nervous. Men in uniform weren't supposed to be confused or fearful, and when they were, bad things happened. "Uh . . , you say you live on this road, ma'am?"

"That's right. About a half a mile the other side of Four Corners. The big farm on the left. And now we'll thank you to move that little barrier out of the way so we can get home to our son."

The soldier was very still for a moment, then he took a breath and put the tough face back on. "I'm very sorry, ma'am, but I can't do that. We have orders not to let anyone by."

"You haveorders to keep me from going home?" Jean asked incredulously, leaning forward in her seat so she could shoot a withering glance in the soldier's direction. "I don't think so. Now let us by or we'll drive right over you and your roadblock."

Oh, this was just terrific,Harold thought. He was planted smack-dab in the middle of a firing zone between a raging woman and a stressed-out kid with a firearm. He gave Jean a warning glance, then turned back to the soldier, forced a thin smile, and tried his best to sound reasonable, even though his patience was fraying. "Listen, soldier, we just want to get home to our boy. Surely you can understand that."

"I do, sir, but we have our orders," he repeated.

"And just what are we supposed to do? Drive around until you're finished playing your war games?"

"That's up to you, sir. I'm just doing my job."

"This is not your job. I want to speak to your commanding officer right now. And if you don't make that happen, I'm going to turn this truck around, find the closest phone, and you can make your explanations to the Missaqua County Sheriff's Department."

The soldier was clearly distressed now, his eyes darting back and forth between them, and Harold thought he saw a flicker of guilt and remorse in his eyes. "Would you wait just a moment, sir, ma'am?" I'm going to have to call this in." And with that, he spun smartly on his heel and double-timed it back to the sawhorses where the other soldier stood watching.

Startled by his sudden departure, Harold felt the little tickle on the back of his neck intensify, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when Jean touched his hand.

"Something's wrong," she whispered, and he heard the tremor in her voice and felt its echo deep in the pit of his stomach. "Something happened, something they won't tell us. ..."

"Honey, take it easy." Harold covered her hand with his and squeezed, trying to dredge up a reassuring smile. "These boys can only do what they're told. If he has orders to block the road, he'll keep his own mother out, but a higher-up will straighten him out."

He watched the two soldiers through the windshield. Freckle-face was over at the jeep, talking to somebody on the radio; the other one kept his eyes trained on the pickup.

Harold rubbed at the sweat trickling down his neck. Damn truck was a sweatbox when it wasn't moving, and this was taking too damn long. "Wait here. I'm going to see what the holdup is."

Freckle-face had just signed off the radio when he heard the long screech of the truck door opening on rusty hinges and saw Harold Wittig step down onto the road. His first thought was how much the man looked like a comic-book Superman, with a curl of black hair over his forehead and the arms and shoulders of a weight lifter. His second thought was barely a thought at all-just an animal's instinctive response to stimuli. He spun in place like a deadly ballerina, swinging his rifle around to point directly at Harold Wittig's mid-

section, and even before he had completed his turn, his partner was down in a crouch with his rifle aimed. "Hold it right there!"

Harold stopped dead and gaped at the rifles in utter disbelief. He finally remembered to blink when his eyes started to burn. He closed his mouth to swallow, then asked quietly, "Are you boys out of your minds? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The soldier's voice was a little shaky, but the muzzle pointed at Harold never wavered. "We're just doing our job, sir."

Harold stared at him, incredulous. "Your job? It's your job to point a weapon at an unarmed civilian? It's your job to keep people from going home?" He started to take a step forward.

"Sir!"The soldier rattled the strap on the Ml6 as he jerked it to brace on his hip.

Harold froze.

"Please don't move, sir."

Goddamn weekend warriors, Harold thought, suddenly furious that a couple of toy soldiers who came out only once a month to play had the nerve to point guns, loaded or not, at one of the taxpayers who paid their salaries. He squared his shoulders and dropped his head and looked from one to the other. "You boys have just bought yourselves a world of hurt. . . ."

"Harold?"

Confused by the unexpected sound of his wife's voice, Harold swung his big head around to see Jean out of the truck, cowering by the right fender, terrified eyes jerking back and forth from her husband to the rifles. Jesus Christ, he would never understand women. She wouldn't eat eggs for fear of clogging an artery forty years down the line, but she'd walk out in front of two M16s as if she were made of Kevlar.

"Get back in the truck, Jean," he said calmly, because even though he was sure-absolutely sure-those guns weren't loaded, he didn't need her out here complicating matters.

She looked at him for a moment, then turned and got back into the truck.

"You too, sir," Freckle-face called out, gesturing with his rifle. "Back in the truck, please. Now. You're almost cleared for entry. I'm just waiting for a callback. It should only be another minute or so."

Harold glared at him for a second, then climbed up into the truck. He glanced at the tears coursing down his wife's face, saw the violent trembling of her hands, and for the first time in his life, wanted to harm another human being. Two of them, in fact. For right now, there wasn't a whole lot he could do with a couple of puffed-up hot-shots who might or might not be carrying live ammunition, but by God, the second he got near a phone he was going to burn up the wires all the way to Washington if he had to, and see these assholes up on ...

Wait a minute, Harold.

He'd been staring at the soldiers by the jeep, vision and mind clouded by the red blur of impotent fury, and goddamnit, he hadn't seen it, hadn't seen what any clear-eyed fool would have noticed right off, and now he felt a ball of fear that clenched at his stomach and almost stopped his heart.

"Jean," he whispered, eyes straight ahead now, lips barely moving, sweat rolling down from his forehead like someone had just turned on a faucet. "Get down on the seat and hang on."

The funny thing was that Jean, as strong-minded a woman as he'd ever known, did as she was told without a second's hesitation, probably because she had known long before he did how wrong things were here. "Are we going to find Tommy?" was the only thing she asked.

"That's where we're going."

Harold eased the gearshift out of park, slowly, carefully, sliding his butt forward on the seat until he could barely see over the wheel, and then his lug-soled lace-up punched the accelerator and the old Ford leaped forward and smashed through the sawhorses like a crazed bull going through a barn wall. Shards of wood were flying everywhere, and the engine was roaring so loud that they could hardly hear the gunfire that was shattering the windows around them.

ANNIE AND SHARON had moved up next to Grace at the cafe's screen door by the time the distant popping sound started to syncopate the roar of whatever was coming.

Annie was pretty excited. She'd already identified the roaring as the approach of a big pickup-she'd spent a fair amount of time in those during her Mississippi youth, both upright and reclined-and at this point she wasn't at all particular about the mode of transportation arriving. Just so she didn't have to walk ten miles in this heat or spend two hours trying to patch twenty-five telephone wires. The popping was troublesome, though. "What is that? Firecrackers?"

"Automatic rifles," Sharon replied without a trace of doubt, slipping her weapon from her leather shoulder bag, and Annie's vision of rescue by some husky country good ol' boys took a dark turn.

Grace already had her Sig in her hand. Over the years, her survival instinct had been honed down to the most primal level. She never stopped to analyze, to moralize, to ethically weigh the wisdom of pulling her gun. If she sensed danger, the weapon came out of the holster. It was that simple. And automatic rifle fire didn't belong in the Wisconsin countryside.

She was still looking through the screen door to the left where the road curved into the woods, and then they all heard it and saw it at the same time: a battered white pickup roaring around the curve and into the town, zigzagging crazily, steam pouring out of the grill, the shredded rubber of its tires slapping the tar while sparks flew from the undercarriage.

Grace flung out an arm, saying, "Back! Back!" and pushing Annie and Sharon away from the door and the big front windows, her first fear being that the truck would veer into the cafe, shattering the glass.

Instead, the roaring sound ended abruptly with the sudden death of its engine, and the truck came to a wheezing stop in the middle of the street directly in front of the cafe, its windows shattered, its side peppered with what had to be bullet holes.

In the next heartbeat, a jeep came careening around the curve and screeched to a halt inches behind the crippled truck, and Grace and Sharon both started to raise their guns. But then two soldiers jumped out, automatic rifles leveled at the truck, both of them red-faced and screaming, "Get out! Get out! Get out!" and for the very first time in more than a decade, Grace was holding a gun in her hand and wasn't certain what to do with it. Pulling her gun at the sound of automatic weapon fire had seemed perfectly sensible, but when the fire was coming from men in uniform, it changed everything. She caught a glimpse of Sharon's gun in her peripheral vision, frozen at half-mast as hers was.

The soldiers were yelling, the damaged passenger door screamed as it was flung open, and then there was silence so deep that Grace could hear the bright tinkling of shattered glass tumbling to the asphalt. A pretty blonde woman in a print dress stepped down from the truck and would have collapsed, had she not been supported by the strong hands of the man who climbed down behind her. Grace had a millisecond to see the flash of a gold wedding band on the man's left hand and a skim of white slip showing below the hem of the young woman's dress before the soldiers opened fire.

The man fell first, a red blossom erupting on the blue of his denim shirt. And then new red flowers bloomed all over the woman's dress and she began to sink to the ground.

For an instant, Grace, Sharon, and Annie were frozen in place like mannequins on display-three women with their breath caught in their throats, standing ten feet behind a plate-glass window in plain view of anyone who happened to look.

But the guns kept firing, and when the man and the woman fell, that single heartbeat of immobility was over. The three women dove to the floor as one, below the sight line of the windows, and started scrambling on hands and knees toward the cafe's back door. They slipped outside with the guns still firing behind them, bolted across the narrow strip of grass between the cafe and the frame house, then into the woods.

That was the great thing about women, Grace thought. Forget the female reputation for endless speculation and discussion-when things went south, women didn't stop to analyze. Even women with guns in their hands deferred to instincts honed by centuries. Warning. Danger. Run. Hide.