Deadlock Read online

  Hide there.”

  “But—” Dillon started.

  “Do it!” Hutch said. He gave them both a hard look that said, Don’t even think of questioning me!

  Macie tripped over Dillon getting past him. Dillon gave Hutch an anguished expression, turned fast enough to catch Macie, and, hunched, they ran together to the other side of the next car.

  Hutch darted to the XTerra’s passenger door. Knowing it would be locked, of course, he tried the handle. It opened. He blinked, trying to see the objects inside, but a liquid blindfold had slid over his eyes. He rubbed at them, squinted at his fingers. Blood. He must have received a new head wound that hadn’t started hurting yet, or he’d reopened the one from when the Mustang had hit the van. He pulled up the collar of his shirt and wiped his eyes.

  He saw the weapon. It was the same model the soldiers had used in the attack at the motel.

  How did Laura—?

  No time for questions. Just move.

  He pulled the machine gun out of the footwell. He toggled the safety switch in front of the trigger guard with his thumb, revealing a triangle of red paint. Hunkering down, breathing hard, he returned to the front of the XTerra.

  He didn’t hear gunfire—then pop-pop-pop! It seemed as though someone slapped an open hand against the XTerra’s hood in time with the sounds.

  Hutch turned and pressed his back against the bumper. He squatted down onto his heels. Laura hadn’t moved. She lay in the center of the road, her arms over her head, her eyes peering out at him.

  “Can you see him, the shooter?” Hutch called in a stage whisper.

  She shook her head quickly.

  “Then stay there!”

  She probably would have been safe crawling to him, but he didn’t want to risk her moving into his line of fire. Besides, the gunman seemed more interested in shooting Hutch. She was better off away from him.

  He breathed out slowly, concentrating on what he had to do. He wished he were a better aim with a firearm. It’d never been his thing, rifle hunting, target shooting with a pistol. Give him a bow and arrow, point him toward the woods, and he was good to go. Give him a firearm, and whatever he was shooting at better be within arm’s reach.

  This guy wasn’t. Hutch thought about what lay between him and the gunman: the XTerra’s row of cars, the row behind it, the next aisle over, and another row of cars. Then the guy, standing on some tall vehicle, taking potshots at him. One thing was sure. Outis recruits could outshoot Hutch in their sleep.

  But he doesn’t know that, Hutch thought. At least right now he doesn’t. If I don’t blow it completely—shoot off my own hand or something—maybe I can keep him from moving in until help comes.

  But the gunman wasn’t going to be frightened away by Hutch brandishing a weapon he didn’t have the skill to aim. Hutch knew from somewhere—maybe a History Channel documentary—that most battles were won through attrition: the combatants simply kept fighting until the other side had too few able-bodied men to continue. If that was the strategy taught at Outis, then that guy wasn’t going away until more men and firepower became aligned against him or they zipped him up in a body bag.

  So bring in the cops—he’d worry about the repercussions later. Just don’t let Macie, Laura, and Dillon get hurt.

  God, don’t let them get hurt.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Hutch waited until the man shot at the hood again—his bullets striking the metal and the asphalt beyond. As soon as Hutch detected a pause, he rose and spun. The man was ready. He fired. The bullets broke the driver’s-side glass, punched holes in the windshield. Glass sprayed Hutch’s face. He started to drop down, changed his mind, and held his ground. He aimed and fired. Fist-sized holes appeared in the windshield in front of the gunman, who ducked. Hutch did the same.

  Yeah, he thought. Weren’t expecting that, were you?

  He couldn’t believe he’d placed the rounds so close to his target.

  Nice.

  Maybe he could do this after all.

  At the far other end of the aisle, a taxicab rolled slowly toward them. The driver’s door opened and a man tumbled out. He rolled away, scrambled to his feet, and began yelling. A shaking fist punctuated his words.

  Shadows shifted behind the taxi’s windshield, then another man leaned out to grab hold of the door. It was the Outis soldier from the airport. The man yanked the door closed, and the yellow vehicle accelerated. It was heading directly for Laura, who was lying on her stomach in the middle of the aisle. She had lowered her face to the street, wrapping her head with her arms as though they would protect her from machine-gun fire.

  “Laura!” Hutch yelled. “Laura!”

  She couldn’t hear him over the car alarms, screaming people, revved engine, and gunfire—the man Hutch had shot at had recovered and was punishing him with a barrage of bullets. He would never be able to reach her in time—not crawling, and as soon as he moved away from the XTerra’s bumper, he’d feel the hot burn of lead.

  “Laura!”

  He raised the machine gun and pulled the trigger, releasing a three-round burst. Pulled it again, and again. Two of his bullets hit the windshield of the approaching car—in the upper corner on the passenger side. The glass wall of a faraway shelter shattered. Spectators at the end of the aisle began a new volley of screams and yells.

  Hutch fired again. The next time he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. The weapon was either jammed or empty.

  The taxi kept coming. The driver aligned the wheels with Laura’s prone body.

  Hutch tried firing again. Nothing.

  “Laura!” he yelled.

  “Hutch!” Dillon was crouched next to the XTerra. He raised something to him: the bow. Hutch let the machine gun clatter to the ground. He grabbed the bow, then the arrow Dillon held out in his other hand. He had the arrow nocked on the string and ready to shoot in three seconds. It was like slipping into his favorite jeans. One fingertip touched the string above the arrow, two below it. It took him another half second to realize the cab’s windows would easily deflect the arrow, especially considering the shot’s acute angle.

  Laura glanced up. She registered the direction of his aim and craned her head around. The car was a hundred feet from her . . . ninety: less than ten seconds.

  He lowered his aim. Instantly, he calculated the speed and trajectory of his arrow in relation to the speed and trajectory of the car—a skill honed on deer, which ran faster than the thirty miles an hour he guessed the car was moving. In one fluid movement, he pulled back to full draw, where the thumb of his string hand grazed his earlobe, and released. The arrow sailed away from him at 240 feet per second. He grimaced when he realized he had miscalculated. It struck the lip of the wheel well in front of the tire he had aimed for. It glanced off the metal and penetrated the tire, which exploded as surely as it would have had Hutch hit it with a bullet. The car pulled sharply to the left.

  It ran over Laura.

  The taxi’s front-end mercifully blocked Hutch’s view.

  His stomach cramped. His mouth dropped open.

  The taxi continued its sharp leftward incline and crashed into a parked car before reaching Hutch’s position.

  Hutch leaned and pushed Dillon back between the cars. He yanked the quiver of arrows the boy gripped in both hands.

  Laura stood up. She had not been run over; Hutch’s perspective had only made it appear so. Her knees wobbled, and she swayed. She looked dazed, but she slapped the hair back from her face and smiled.

  Way to go, he thought, then immediately remembered why she’d been lying there in the first place and yelled, “Get down!”

  A bullet struck her right shoulder. Laura’s face twisted in pain and shock. Her feet seemed to take flight, sailing out in front of her. She landed hard on her back. She grabbed her shoulder and rolled toward the cars on the opposite side of the aisle.

  But she was moving. She was all right.

  Relief washed over Hutch like ice water on a parched thro
at.

  She kept rolling until she was mostly under a bumper. Then she turned like a watch hand, getting her legs under the car farther. She began wiggling backward into the shadow of the undercarriage.

  Hutch’s mind could hardly keep up with the situation. As Laura had, he had momentarily forgotten about the shooter two aisles over.

  “Daddy!” Macie was leaning out from the spot where he had sent her. A car lay between them.

  “No, baby, go back,” he said.

  She ducked back between the cars, giving him a clear view of the wrecked taxicab. The man inside battered down the airbag and shoved his shoulder into the driver’s door. It was crumpled and smashed up against the car it had struck. He saw Hutch looking and bared his teeth. The man’s head mimicked a chicken’s as he searched the interior for something—Hutch didn’t have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out what.

  Hutch pulled an arrow from the quiver and nocked it. He said, “Dillon, crawl under the car.” He nodded his head toward the sedan beside the XTerra. “Get Macie under there with you. Don’t come out till I tell you. Got it?”

  The boy dropped to the blacktop. He scrambled away, getting his entire body underneath the car. Hutch heard him calling to Macie.

  The man inside the taxicab raised a pistol. Hutch saw the flash, a billow of smoke, and the windshield became opaque with cracks. Another shot and the glass fell away, cascading over the hood.

  Hutch plucked at the bow’s string. The arrow sailed into the glassless windshield opening. The man jerked his head sideways. The arrow pierced a headrest. A starburst of cracks appeared in the Plexiglas partition behind it.

  The man glared at the eighteen inches of shaft and feathers vibrating a hand’s-breath from his head. He disappeared beneath the dash. The passenger door swung open.

  Hutch pulled out another arrow.

  The man’s feet appeared below the door.

  Hutch positioned his fingers, raised the bow, and waited for a clean shot.

  The soldier rose up behind the door, swinging his pistol over the window frame.

  Hutch plucked the string back and—

  The string snapped. The arrow pinwheeled into the air, sailing back over his shoulder. It happened in the field enough that most bow hunters carried extra strings.

  But now? Now?

  Behind a big pistol, the man at the car smiled and closed one eye.

  Then man and car door exploded forward. Both flipped up and landed on the hood of a car that had plowed into them from behind. The door spun away as though it weighed nothing. The man hit the windshield, made a head-sized concavity in it, and kept tumbling—over the roof and out of sight.

  The car screeched to a stop beside Hutch. Its tires coughed out smoke, which washed over the vehicle and drifted off. A single amber strobe flashed on the roof. Behind the glass of the driver’s door an old black man looked as though he’d just been shot out of a cannon. A security company’s patch had been sewn to the man’s sleeve over his bicep.

  The window slid down, and the man looked out at Hutch. He said, “You better be one of the good guys.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  “Get down!” Hutch said to the man in the security car.

  “Wha—?”

  Bullets pinged into the roof and took out the remaining amber strobe.

  The security guard opened the door and spilled to the ground. He crawled to Hutch and said, “What the Sam Hill is happ’nin,’ man?”

  The machine gun kept firing—pop-pop-pop . . . pop-pop-pop—but Hutch couldn’t see or hear what the bullets were hitting. Then they slammed into the cruiser’s trunk, and Laura came crawling around the rear of the car. When she was close enough to be out of the gunman’s line of sight, the gunfire stopped. She rolled onto her side and grabbed her shoulder. Her hand couldn’t cover the swath of blood.

  “Laura,” Hutch said. “Your shoulder.”

  She bit her lip, but said, “Flesh wound.” Her eyes took on all the world’s sorrows. “Hutch, Logan—”

  “Larry told me.”

  Their words came fast, rushing as they huddled closer together in front of the XTerra.

  Laura frowned at the guard. “Charlie . . .”

  “That your old man, the one with the machine gun?” the old man said, peering over the grille toward the gunman. “Hell’s bells, woman, you should have told me!”

  “Not my husband. These guys are professional soldiers,” Laura said.

  Charlie shook his head. “Killers, not soldiers. Soldiers got more honor than what I seen here.”

  She said, “You could have been killed.”

  “No fooling. What’s that guy doing?”

  Hutch popped his head up. “Shooting from that van over there. I got a few shots at him. I think he was in contact with his buddy, the one you took care of. I don’t know what he’s going to do now that his backup is out of the picture.”

  Charlie squatted low. “How many of them are there?”

  “I saw two,” Laura said. “I think they’re it.”

  Charlie took in the bow. He said, “Haven’t you ever heard you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gunfight? I think that applies to a bow and arrow, too, my friend.”

  Hutch nodded. “I’m better with this than I am with that.” He indicated the TMP at his feet.

  “Whoa,” Charlie said. “Now you’re talking.” He picked up the machine gun, pushed a button that released its magazine, looked into it, and tossed the magazine away. He pulled back on a small tab, which showed him the chamber. “Empty gun’s worse than a knife or a bow,” he said.

  “You know your way around those things?” Hutch asked.

  “Two tours in ’Nam. Third Brigade, First Air Cavalry Division. Didn’t have that weapon back then, but a gun’s a gun, pretty much.”

  “So you can shoot?” Laura said.

  “With bullets I can.”

  “How about that?” Laura said, pointing. The pistol the soldier had aimed at Hutch rested against the tire of the car under which Dillon and Macie hid; their wide faces peered out from the shadows.

  “You kids stay right where you are,” Charlie instructed. He crawled a few feet, grabbed the gun. He checked it for ammo. He hefted it. “This I can use.”

  “Hey!” The yell was muffled. It had come from inside the car.

  Charlie and Hutch shared a startled expression. Crouched in front of the grille, Charlie wiggled like a cat about to pounce. He held the pistol in both hands.

  Before he could spring up, Laura grabbed his shoulder. “It’s one of the soldiers,” she said. “I got him tied up in the cargo area.”

  “What?” Hutch said.

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “Get me out of here,” the voice yelled. “Untie me. They’re shooting at me!”

  “Michael,” Laura yelled. “Stay down.”

  Hutch looked at the van. He dropped down and scanned under the cars. “I don’t see the gunman,” he said. “He might be out of the van, trying to get around to us.”

  Charlie’s head snapped around in all directions. He said, “Cops’ll be here soon. I didn’t have time to call it in myself, but I saw a lot of excited mouthin’ into cell phones.”

  “Shouldn’t they already be here?” Hutch said. “I mean—” He realized only about three minutes had passed since the explosion. It seemed like ten times that.

  “Airport’s a few miles away,” Charlie said. “It’s a bear getting here. You have to pass the lot, then circle back on the front road.”

  Hutch snapped his head around. He swore. “He’s on foot, I know it!”

  “Wait, wait,” Laura said. “There.”

  The man had reappeared above the door of the van. He lifted a black object and fitted it over his head. One of the helmets Hutch had seen at the motel.

  Laura said, “Hutch, those helmets, I think they have all kinds of stuff that’ll help him—”

  “I know,” Hutch said.

  “I don’t like the looks of it, no matter
what it does,” Charlie said. He rose straight up. Holding the pistol in his right hand, with his left bracing the butt of the gun, he raised it a foot in front of his face. Without pause he squeezed off a round.

  The bullet struck the face mask—a white circle, dead center. The gunman’s head snapped back. He grabbed the window frame to keep from toppling backward. He pulled himself up, shook off the shock, gave a final look at them, and slipped into the vehicle. The door shut.

  Hutch slapped Charlie on the back. “Nice, man!”

  Laura grabbed Hutch’s arm. “Hutch, Logan might be in that van!”

  Hutch felt a dumbfounded expression touch his features. His face tightened with determination. He brushed past Charlie and shot between the cars toward the gunman’s vehicle.

  “Hutch—” Laura called.

  “Stay with the kids,” he said. Charlie fell in behind him. He reached the next aisle—still one away from the van. He cut across it diagonally, directly toward the van, which was pulling away. It headed for the back road, was already there.

  Hutch slammed into a fender and ran between two cars. He reached the spot where the van had been. It turned right onto the back road, heading the opposite direction from the way Hutch had expected. Instead of going toward the exit, it accelerated the way it had been facing when it was parked—toward the destroyed Honda. Hutch reversed and ran between the parked cars, parallel to the back road.

  He caught a glimpse of Charlie leveling the pistol off the roof, aiming at the speeding van. He waved at him.

  “No!” he said. “Don’t shoot! My boy’s in there.” Of course he was. Where else would he be?

  The van turned into the Honda’s aisle, which was also where the XTerra was parked—the aisle with Laura and the kids.

  Putting everything he had into his legs, Hutch pushed harder.

  “Laura!” he yelled. “Run! Hide! Get away!” He didn’t know what she should do, didn’t know where she was.

  The van picked up speed. It crashed into the upside-down taxicab, knocking it aside. But it didn’t move enough for the van to get past. Its rear tires spun on the asphalt, generating plumes of smoke. Metal squealed. Stuck between the Corvette that boasted the Honda’s engine as a hood ornament and the taxi, the van wasn’t going anywhere.