Edge (27 page)

There are herding dogs that move sheep around in a field and then there are herding dogs that both guard the flock and attack predators, however big and however numerous. . . .

Sorry, Abe. I'm the second type. I can't help it.

I narrowed the distance, debating my next strategy. I'd called Freddy from the road and knew there were officers and agents en route, running silent. Already local officers would be setting up roadblocks. Freddy's ETA was probably twenty minutes.

This was a poor area to stage a one-on-one tactical assault and, though the ID was certain, I had no clear target presenting. Loving was in and out of shadows. A missed shot would be far too dangerous and not worth the risk.

And where was his partner?

I continued on. Once he was in the house, it would take him ten minutes to search all the rooms and realize that his edge had left and was not hiding in the obvious places.

I was moving closer, still under good cover and largely silent.

He approached the garage and looked in. He'd see Carter's SUV inside. He eased into the bushes separating the building from the house itself. He crouched and moved along a low gray fence connecting the two structures. The foliage was high there and dense. It was hard to see his form but I could just make it out. Then I stopped, a twitching in my belly. If Loving continued another fifteen feet or so in the direction he was headed, he'd be in a clearing. And would present a perfectly backlit target.

I lifted my weapon and aimed where he'd appear.
I was about eighty feet away. Not a particularly long distance for a powerful handgun like this—a .40 caliber. Even with the short barrel, a cluster would likely kill him. I remembered the training. Three shots high, three low. Move aside from where your muzzle flash would've registered and prepare to fire again. Count rounds expended.

He kept going. Ten feet to the break in the plants.

Then eight, then six. . . .

I suddenly felt my heart rate increasing, my palms cooling from sweat.

Here was Henry Loving in front of me, nearly in my sights. . . .

Two thoughts came into my mind: We have specific rules of engagement that require us to make a surrender demand unless we or someone else is in imminent danger. That rule applies to every hostile, even those who are armed and who are willing to use a sixteen-year-old girl's screams to force her sobbing father to tell what he knows.

Even those who'd tortured and killed a good man like Abe Fallow.

But my second thought was: three high, three low, step aside, prepare to shoot again.

I curled my left hand under my right, aimed steadily, evened my breathing.

Four feet until the shadow that was Henry Loving would break from the brush and I'd have a perfect shot. He now approached the clearing but, instead of standing, he dropped to a crouch, still obscured by the thick brush.

Stand up, I thought. Stand up, goddamn it! I felt a flush of anger, unusual for me, as I squinted
at the darkness of his form on the other side of the brush.

Hell, just go for it, I told myself suddenly. Empty your entire mag and reload. . . . A slow breath. Now! I went into a shooting stance and leaned forward, started applying pressure.

I felt as if I could will the bullets to strike their target.

I probably got to four pounds of pressure on a trigger with a pull of five and a half, then gave an inaudible sigh and lowered the gun.

I reflected on what I'd just thought:
willing the bullets.

Shooting is physics and chemistry, vision and steady muscles, choosing the right strategy of firing position, having a clear target. There is no will involved. There's no luck involved.

I was a shepherd. I couldn't afford to be emotional.

If I'd shot and merely wounded him or missed, he would have had my position. For all I knew the partner was fifty yards behind me, waiting for
me
to present. Or, hearing the shot, Bill Carter and Amanda might leave cover to come see what had happened.

Unnerved that I'd nearly given in to emotion, I checked the ground in front of me to make sure I could move silently and I started forward again.

Still using the plants for cover, Loving slipped up to the gate and tried it gently, testing for squeaking. I saw him extract something from his pocket and he appeared to oil the hinges. Then, still halfway out of sight, he slipped through and made his way toward the house, under good cover.

Debating, I finally picked my strategy.

I turned away and headed for the clearing where Bill Carter and Amanda waited.

It was one of the hardest decisions I'd ever made.

But my goal was clear. For me, solo, to try to take Loving in the house was inefficient. A tactical move would have required at least two and ideally four others. My best strategy was to find my principals and get them out. Loving's going inside would buy us ten minutes. I'd let Freddy and his crew run the takedown.

I oriented myself and backed up the way I'd come, then turned left, toward where I knew the girl and Carter were hiding. It was some distance, maybe three hundred yards, across the length of the property. But I had a sense of the forest now and I noted the area ahead of me was largely coniferous—with plenty of pine needles dampening the ground, leaving resinous branches that didn't snap when you stepped on them. One could move quickly and in virtual silence here.

Which was why, as I took my first step forward, Loving's partner got me from behind; I never heard his approach.

A grunt of a whisper: “Drop that weapon. Hands out to your side.” I felt the muzzle of a gun kiss my back.

AS THE PARTNER
pressed his gun harder into my spine, I thought: Is this what Abe Fallow had heard not long before Loving had gone to work on him?

Hands out to the side. . . .

I was about to die too.

But not right away.

Because like my mentor, I was valuable. I wondered if Loving had created a flytrap of his own. Maybe he'd used the girl not as an edge on her father but to get me to give up the detective, speculating that it might be logistically difficult to let Ryan know they had his daughter.

I'd been the bait in our flytrap; Amanda was the bait here.

“I told you. Gun. Drop it.”

I did. You can't spin around faster than a bullet.

How long could I hold out? I wondered.

Sandpaper and alcohol . . .

Memories of Peggy and the boys, Jeremy and Sam, surfaced.

Then the voice behind me whispered, “Wait.”

Curious. It seemed that he was speaking to himself.

Then I heard pleasantly, “Oh, that's you, isn't it, Corte?”

My hands started shaking and I turned around slowly to see Bill Carter, holding a twelve-gauge over-under shotgun pointed directly at my chest. His finger wasn't outside the guard. Amanda was behind him, eyes wide.

Breathing hard now. So hard my chest hurt.

He lowered the scattergun.

“You didn't go to the clearing,” I whispered.

“No. Seemed too far. And looks like you weren't in any big hurry to come visit either.”

True, I reflected.

Amanda gazed at me with cautious but steady eyes. Definitely her father's eyes. She still had around her shoulder her plush bear purse.

I studied the area around us. It wasn't defensible—we were in a low point. I wanted to get back to the car and leave as fast as we could.

We crouched. “He's in the house. He'll know you're not there any minute now.”

I gestured toward the road and to the right. “My car's past the rock fence in front. About two hundred yards. Let's go now. Come on, Amanda. It's going to be fine.”

She didn't look like she needed reassurance. I got the feeling she wanted to go after Loving herself.

Grit . . .

I guided us up the incline of the ravine and toward the road. We moved slowly and I was getting dizzy from looking from side to side and behind us so often. There were a thousand configurations of shadow and shapes of green that took on the dimensions and postures of a hostile.

Still, none broke away from the backdrop and became an armed human.

Twenty yards, then thirty, then fifty.

Suddenly Amanda gasped. Our weapons up, Carter and I dropped to our knees and I pulled the girl down, looking in the direction she was.

The deer emerged from the bushes he was grazing on and stared at us with a face both blank and cautious. Two others joined him. Carter picked up a rock and was going to toss it to scare them off, presumably to make Loving think that any noise he might've heard was from this fauna. But I shook my head, opting for quiet.

Sometimes you can outsmart yourself.

Looking down and verifying that there were no signs the partner had come along the path I'd chosen to follow, we continued on silently. The deer went back to destroying a bush for lunch.

More noises near us.

Animals? Or Loving? The partner?

We came to a bald strip of the property, about fifty feet across. To keep to cover, going around, would have taken too long. I motioned us across the open space.

Just as we reached the other side, I looked back. About a football field's distance, I caught a glimpse of the house.

And I saw Henry Loving stepping into the front yard. He looked our way and froze.

Then dug into his pocket for a radio or mobile.

“He spotted us. Move fast!”

I indicated the asphalt and we started to run.

“Bill, watch the rear. If you see him, aim low. He'll be crouching.”

Better a minor wound on the feet and ankles than a miss over the head, Abe used to say.

“Got it.”

I whispered, “Come on, Amanda. We're doing fine.”

Keeping low, gasping, we ran through the thinning undergrowth, not caring about noise. I expected to hear at any moment the near simultaneous snap of the bullet and the boom of the weapon from behind us. But neither Loving nor his partner fired. Amanda was no good to them dead. You need your edge relatively healthy.

Finally, all of us breathing hard, we approached the road. About fifty yards away was my car, on the other side of the stone fence. We sprinted through the low brush.

Carter glanced back. “I think I see him. Go on, get in the car. I'll cover you.”

“No.” We ran a bit farther then I pulled the others down beside me, under the cover of a fallen tree, old enough that as a youngster it might have given similar protection and comfort to Union or Confederate soldiers making their way south after the carnage of the most deadly battle of the Civil War, Antietam.

I was sure I saw Loving behind us, not far away, maybe sixty, seventy yards or so. He too had ducked behind a tree next to the wall.

I said to Carter, “We're going to move up close to the car. I'll be in the rear. I'll start it remotely. When it starts, fire both barrels into the woods across the road. This time I want you to aim high. Reload and fire two more. Fast. Then, you both go over the wall. Amanda, get in the backseat and get down. Bill, drive maybe twenty feet or so forward, then stop, cover the forest across the road with your sidearm. I'll join you in a minute.”

“The partner's over there?”

“That's right.”

He didn't ask how I knew and I wasn't inclined to explain that it was simply rational.

A glance at both faces, sweaty and flecked with leaf debris. “Ready?”

Nods.

I pressed the ignition button and the engine came to life. Our cars have special mufflers to deaden the exhaust sound but there's nothing you can do about a starter.

Carter didn't hesitate. The instant the car started, he did as I'd asked: rising over the fence and firing two hugely loud rounds. He reloaded, fired two more and reloaded again, as I fired a burst of six in the direction where Loving was hiding. Carter grabbed Amanda by the hand. They ran to the car.

It squealed away, while I rolled over the stone fence and lay in tall grass on the shoulder of the road, prone, aiming back toward Loving.

I felt a tickle on my spine. Loving would think I was in the car but the partner might have seen the ruse and gone for a shot at me in the shallow weeds.

Come on . . . come on . . .

Then Loving presented.

He jumped over the wall and started to aim at the car.

I didn't have much of a shot, with the brush and the wall partially blocking my view, yet it was something. But just as I started to fire, Carter slammed on the brakes—as I'd asked him—and Loving realized my strategy. He didn't see me but he knew what had happened. He spun around and started back over the wall. I emptied my magazine at him.
Chunks of rock flew from the wall and dirt from the ground. Loving vanished over the rock. I couldn't tell if I'd hit him.

Reloading, I saw motion in the leaves across the road—it would be the partner—and I sprinted to the car. I leapt into the driver's seat as Carter scrabbled over to the passenger's.

I floored the accelerator and we sped away.

Carter was looking behind us. “Yeah, there's the partner, climbing out of the woods. And Loving's joining him, they're in the road. Loving's hurt, I think. Doesn't look too steady.”

A few minutes later I skidded around a bend in the road and slowed from eighty-five.

Carter laughed, pointing up. “Your boys're here.”

A chopper swooped in fast, descending as it sped directly for Carter's house. A moment later a stream of black SUVs, in the oncoming lane, braked to a stop, blocking me. They approached with weapons drawn, cautious, and I held my ID out the window.

A young agent, covered by two others, looked into the car and then motioned the vehicles containing his fellow agents around him, to continue on to the house.

“You all right, sir? Everybody's fine?” The agent looked us over.