Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [165]
“So this is my lawyer.”
“Pro hac vice, unless you have another one.”
“What a world.”
They smiled.
“How’re Ariel and the others?”
“I’ve been trying to find out, but I’m in the dark, too.”
“Are we out of here?” Kip asked.
“First I have to get a judge to review charges and set bail. You look awful.”
“Never felt better.”
“Come on.”
“I feel like hell, but I’m not the priority. You think you can work out something so Delfino can leave with more than just promises that the DOD will reconsider his case?”
“I read his letter and documents on the way here with Carl. It looks like a straight uphill battle to me.”
“That’s the kind of case you liberal lawyers are supposed to take on, right?”
Brice warmly smirked at his old friend. Creep. Next thing you know Kip was going to call him boy, just like he used to when they were punk kids.
“Obviously I’ll try to help Delfino. Ariel’s my first concern, though,” Brice said. “They tell me you spoke with her.”
Kip nodded, a bit sheepish about having urged her onto a heading Brice and Jessica wouldn’t necessarily have advocated.
“What’d she say?”
“She said she was fine.”
“Did she want to surrender?”
“No,” Kip murmured, then felt compelled to confess.
Carl, who’d been allowed into the room and had stood quietly by the door, said, “Kip, I thought I knew you, but you’re just as crazy a fuck as my brother.”
Kip stared at the blue floor until Brice broke the lull. “If I know Ariel, she would’ve stuck it out with them anyway. Not in her nature to abandon people,” forgetting for the moment just how abandoning of him, Jessica, and her grandmother his daughter had recently been.
Did Kip hear a gibe against himself in Brice’s words? Perhaps not, but even if one were intended he wouldn’t for a moment defend himself against the truth of the innuendo. What did begin to bother him was the possibility he’d urged Ariel to remain at Dripping Spring because it would delay their reunion. Pathetic, if that were the case. He hardly knew anymore.
Brice’s proposed journey out to the former Montoya ranch site in the role of negotiator never transpired, of course, since while he and Carl were conferring with Kip, the order was passed on to bring the standoff to an end later that same night. White Sands had ascertained through background checks that the cache of arms the intruders had with them in the mountains might run a bit deeper than that sole shotgun the old man carried around. Seems he’d bought some pretty fancy, if outdated, hardware over the years. “If they brought his whole gun cabinet with them, they could put on quite a show,” Jim’s commanding officer told him. Everyone agreed the best course would be to storm them while they were still asleep, or at least drowsy, in predawn, when the light was weakest.
Delfino knew what was happening even as it went down. White heat in his shotgun saturated the charge after the firing pin struck the primer. It flamed through the flash hole, igniting the powder. The pressure behind the cartridge rose so fast it began to bloom, blistering hot. The brass end of the casing swelled until it filled the steel chamber walls of the barrel, and the case neck expanded so as to ram forward the buckshot housing. The only thing free to move, in the face of all this pressure, was the load, which accelerated from the gut of the gun. It was born in a flash of heat, spinning like a mad dervish. Its blast pierced the air. One thousandth of a second passed before some of the shot tore like tiny nettled wasps into his flesh.
All this occurred under a setting moon. Silver light from the Remington offered brief, brilliant illumination, then everything lay veiled under starlight once more. Delfino clutched at his neck and shoulder in disbelief. Ariel, having taken Delfino’s hand when he reached out, toppled with him as he collapsed on the stone fence. He was gibbering when she pulled his head into her lap and shielded him, enfolding the man in her arms. Feeling the warm wet slick of blood on her hands and face,