Tail Spin

The man fired again, but he was off by a good foot. Jack shot two rounds, both of them missing. The man was crouched behind the washing machine just inside the back door.

“What are you doing here?” Jack yelled over the pumping gunfire coming from the front of the house.

The man fired off another half-dozen rounds. Jack felt a sharp spear of wood hit his left arm. He gave a huge cry of pain and slammed his Kimber against the floor. He lay there, still and silent.

The man fired again. Then he slowly rose and looked beyond the kitchen table to where Jack lay, nearly under one of the kitchen chairs. He took a step, then realized he didn’t see the gun, but it was too late.

Jack reared up and shot him.

The man grabbed his shoulder and sank to his knees. His gun dropped onto the floor and skidded against the wall. He toppled over, moaning. Jack walked to the man, struck the back of his head with the gun butt. One down, but of course there had to be one more. Whoever ordered this wasn’t about to take any more chances with only one shooter. No, this was a full-scale assassination squad. He heard two shooters in the front, and likely there was still one more in the back.

Jack pulled a wallet out of the man’s jacket pocket, then looked at the expanse of green lawn that went back for perhaps thirty feet to the forest, a seemingly impenetrable thick, vibrant green. He looked for movement, shadow play, anything to help him locate the other shooter. Or shooters. He was patient. He waited. Finally he saw a flash of movement. A man was trying to slide between two oak saplings, being careful because he’d heard the shot and the yell. By now he had to realize his partner was down.

The man held something in his hand—not a gun or a rifle. Jack realized he was speaking on a walkie-talkie, telling the team leader one was down in the kitchen. Jack saw the dark blue of his shirt when he shifted forward, probably to get a better look at the house, to try to see him. Big mistake, Jack thought. He lined up the shot and fired, but the man was good. He’d seen Jack’s shadow, seen a whisper of movement, he supposed, and dove to the ground. Jack’s bullet went into a tree and spewed up a whirlwind of leaves.

No way was he going to let that man go back around front to join his team. He stretched his arm up and grabbed an apple from the bowl sitting on the breakfast table. He took aim at the trash can container off to his left and threw the apple. It struck hard. He saw the man jerk around, his gun arm swinging smoothly toward the container. Jack stood and fired.

The man didn’t make a sound.

Jack watched him pitch forward out of the forest and onto the grass.

He heard gunfire intensify at the front of the house. He prayed his one civilian and one marine were being careful. He thought the two of them could handle the front. He waited, listened. He was as convinced as he could be that there were no more shooters lurking in the forest. He ran flat out across the backyard, fanning his Kimber, so pumped with adrenaline he could hear his own heart thudding against his chest.

How had they found Slipper Hollow? Not hard, really. With the Internet, nothing was secret for long.

He fell to his knees and checked the man he’d shot. The bullet had gone straight through his heart. He pulled out his wallet, stuck it in with the other one in his pocket. He picked up the fallen walkie-talkie and clicked the speak button. He lowered his voice, crumpled leaves in his left hand to create the impression of static, and prayed. “Hey, it’s not going good here. What do you want me to do?”

“Clay, that you?”

He wasn’t expecting a woman’s voice. “Yeah, it’s me.”

He crumpled more leaves. “Hard to hear you.”

“What about Donley? You said he went in the back and you heard a shot. What happened?”

“He . . . got . . . clocked.”

“All right, all right, dammit, we’ll have to wait until dark to go in. They’re hillbillies, of course they’ve got weapons, probably coon rifles, so a frontal assault is out. Do you think you can get in the back?”

He rubbed his palm over the receiver. “It’s tough, I . . .”

“Clay? Hey, wait, you’re not Clay—”

He heard her cursing, then the walkie-talkie went fuzzy.

Jack quickly began making his way around to the front, in a wide circle, hoping to come in behind the shooters, but truth be told, he wasn’t holding out much hope.

He heard a few more rounds of gunfire, then silence. He pictured the woman and her partner—they were pros, they wouldn’t panic, but they were facing a full-blown screwed-up fiasco. They’d know enough to get out of there fast. Somehow they’d been spotted, and their prey were armed and shooting back. They’d probably believed it would be easy, even though the shooter they’d sent to Parlow was presently residing in Franklin County Hospital. Did they know that? Probably. But what they couldn’t know was that an FBI agent was here with the hillbillies. And one of the hillbillies was a marine, the other a crack shot. What a nice surprise.

If they had a contingency plan, it was shot to hell now. He ran, hunkered down, ignoring the leaves whipping his face, ignoring the pain in his thigh, the blood seeping from the cut in his left arm, and tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible.

He heard something, and stopped on a dime. It sounded like a footstep, a single footstep.

Sunlight speared through the leaves overhead. Silence. Nothing. Then he heard an animal, probably a possum, running away, running from him, he knew.

No footfalls, no one was near. How much farther?

He heard some fresh gunshots coming from Gillette and Rachael, but no return fire.

They were gone.

He ran straight out toward the edge of the forest until he saw the front of the house. He had to be close to their last position. They could still be nearby, see what he was going to do, kill him if he showed himself. Jack didn’t want to get shot. He nearly ran over their former position—saw the flattened leaves, the shells.

They were gone.

He ran all the way back to the road. When he burst out of the woods, he saw two figures in a late-model black Ford Expedition burning rubber down the road.

They’d had to leave their companions. Not a good idea—but they didn’t have a choice.

He ran back as fast as he could, yelled before he broke through the woods in front of Gillette’s house, “It’s Jack! They’re gone. Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!”

Rachael flew out the splintered front door. “Jack! Are you all right? They ran?”