Coon said, “Look—there’s not that many of them. I say we fight it out here. We can take them. We get in these houses, we make them come to us. We’re out in the fuckin’ wilderness, they can’t get help no more than we can.”

Kristen said, “I knew we shouldn’t have come. This was a bad idea right from the start.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Pilate said. “Let’s do what Coon said. Let’s take over some of these buildings and ambush the motherfuckers. Fight it out. We got a chance.”

They all looked at him, his magic almost gone now.

“We do,” he said. “We got a chance.”

Way up ahead, Lucas could see the flashing lights of the state police car, and he said to Frisell, “Gonna have to pull up before we get there. We might have them trapped between us.”

As the last words came out of his mouth, Laurent called from a trailing car. “Dick Blinder’s calling us, he’s been hit, shot, he’s under the bridge. They’re trying to blast him out. He says he’s bleeding bad. There are two cars on the opposite side of the bridge, they’re with Pilate. Dick thinks they left the cars and they’re up in town with Pilate and the others. They’ve got rifles. Dick says if we can’t get him out of that ditch, he won’t make it.”

Lucas took his foot off the gas. “Can you call him back?”

“Yeah, we got him on his shoulder set.”

“Ask him if any of Pilate’s people are in the ditch. If somebody’s in the ditch with him, are they on the east side or the west?”

A moment later, Laurent came back. “He doesn’t think anyone’s in the ditch. He thinks they’re all up in town.”

Lucas couldn’t see Laurent in his rearview mirror; Laurent was in his pickup, and didn’t have flashers. Lucas asked, “Can you see me? Up ahead of you?”

“Yeah, but you’re a way out, probably a mile or more.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for you. When you get close, we’re gonna take off, and try to go around the town to the ditch. Follow along behind us. Tell Dick we’re coming. And tell everybody else in the posse to take up positions on this side of town, block the road and wait, until we know what’s going on.”

“Got it.”

•   •   •

“WHAT EXACTLY are we doing?” Frisell asked.

“Damned if I know. Gotta get closer before I can figure it out,” Lucas said. “You ever been through here?”

“Sure. Once or twice a year, probably.”

“Which side of the road has the most houses, and the least trees?”

“Oh, shit, I’ve never been far off the road . . . uh, God, I think the most houses would be on the left.”

“If they’re planning to shoot it out with us, or take hostages, they’ll probably be along the main street,” Lucas said. “I want to swing around them to the ditch. Once we’re in the ditch, we’ll have cover and we can get to Dick. What’s his last name?”

“Blinder. Kind of an asshole, but I wouldn’t wish him bad luck.”

“Well, he’s highway patrol, or state police, or whatever you call them up here. Being an asshole kinda comes with the territory.” In the rearview mirror, Lucas could see Laurent coming fast.

“Get ready with that rifle. There’s a canvas bag in the back, right behind your seat. It’s a first aid kit. Get that out, and there’s a hard box under the seat, right in front of the first aid kit. Get that, too.”

Frisell popped his safety belt and Lucas started toward the town. Frisell came up with the first aid kit, and the hard box, and Lucas said, “The hard box is full of magazines for my .45. Give them to me. And buckle up.”

Lucas put the magazines in his jacket pocket, and as Frisell buckled in, Lucas said, “Pucker up. Here we go.”

“If I puckered up any harder . . .”

“What?”

“I can’t think of anything funny.”

“I know what you mean.” Lucas took off as Laurent came up behind, and they rolled toward the town at forty miles an hour or so. At the edge of the built-up area, which sat in what amounted to a clearing in the forest, Lucas saw a long strip of vacant ground on the left, leading up to a concrete platform that might once have supported a gas station. Nothing remained of a building. Behind it was more open ground, and beyond that, a scattering of postwar houses.

“Going cross-country,” he said. He slowed and turned into the empty concrete platform, then bounced across the crumbling curb at the back, and ricocheted and bounded and twisted over the rough, soggy ground behind it, his speed falling to ten miles an hour, eventually coming out on a gravel street that led through the scattered houses behind the business district.

He stayed on the road, glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Laurent was still with him. He accelerated, passed the first couple of houses, saw the ditch ahead of him, probably five or six hundred yards away. He could take the gravel tracks for most of the way, but there was a band of weeds and low shrubs along the line of the ditch.

They were moving faster now, passing the houses, bouncing through yards and back onto other tracks; they were a hundred yards out when there was a nasty crack from the backseat and Lucas felt a stinging burn on his neck, and Frisell blurted, “They’re shooting at us, they took out a piece of the window.”

“We’re almost there, we’re almost there—”

“You’re bleeding, man.”

“How bad?”

“Not too bad.”

“Glass,” Lucas said. He touched his neck and came away with blood on his fingers.

There was another crack from the back, but farther back on the truck, and Frisell said, “Dumb shit isn’t leading us enough.”

He said it with such technical disapproval that Lucas had to laugh, and then Frisell started, and they were laughing when they crashed into the brush at the edge of the ditch and were out and running. Laurent and one of his uniformed deputies, Bernie Allen, were out of their truck and running behind them, and they went down into the ditch into ankle-deep water.

Crouching, they were out of sight from the town. Laurent looked at Lucas’s neck and said, “You got hit.”

“Glass. Not too bad.”

“All right,” Laurent said. “I’ll go first with the rifle. Everybody behind me, five meters between you. If I get hit, take out the shooter before you try to help me—no point in anyone else getting shot. Jerry, follow me, we’ll put Lucas in the third spot, and Bernie, you cover our back. Everybody got it?”

Lucas was about to suggest that he lead, but Laurent was already spotting his move, and he started off down the marsh, holding his black rifle at his shoulder, ready to fire, and Lucas realized . . . Laurent’s done this before. So had Frisell. He was the tactical dummy in the group.

They were two hundred yards west of the bridge. They’d covered a hundred of that when Laurent stopped and put up a hand, then said, aloud, “We’re getting closer to the buildings, where somebody on the roof could see us. Bernie, you cover the roofs. I’m going on to the bridge. Lucas, you come behind me, but not until you see me get there. Jerry and Bernie, come down one at a time—we’ll cover you from the bridge. We’ll be moving fast now.”

Everybody nodded, and Laurent took a breath and ran toward the bridge, not bothering to crouch anymore. Frisell and Allen half stood with their rifles, looking at the rooflines of two nearby buildings, but nobody showed, and fifteen seconds after he took off—it seemed like forever—Laurent ducked under the bridge, and Frisell said to Lucas, “Go.”