Blood Trail - C. J. Box [42]
In the timber on the other side of the small meadow a twig snapped.
They were on him.
Lothar nodded his head and gestured toward the black stand of pine trees on the other side of the meadow while unslinging his automatic rifle. Lothar used the barrel of his weapon to indicate to Joe that he should move to the left. Using Lothar’s heel-first technique in the soft loam, Joe managed to distance himself about twenty feet without stepping on a branch or knocking his hat off in the heavy brush. As he moved he thumbed the safety off his shotgun and peered into the dark wall of trees, willing himself to see better.
The sharp voice came so suddenly he nearly dropped his shotgun.
“Drop your wapon! Drop it! Throw it out where I can see it!”
The man giving the command did so with authority that masked his exact position. Joe thought he heard a note of familiarity in the voice but couldn’t place it.
“Throw it out. Now!”
“Okay,” Lothar said. “Calm down, calm down.”
“Is there anyone with you?” the voice asked.
Joe thought, He doesn’t know I’m here. Would Lothar give him away?
“I’m coming out,” Lothar said, stepping from the brush into the meadow, the moon bathing him in shadowed blue. He held his AR- 15 loosely at his side. Joe could see Lothar’s face in the moonlight. He was grinning.
What was Lothar doing? Why didn’t he identify himself as an officer of the law? Should I, Joe asked himself, and give away my position ?
“I said drop it!” the voice bellowed, and Joe detected a note of panic. He also realized where he’d heard the voice before.
Joe shouted, “Lothar, no . . .”
But before Joe could finish, Lothar howled a piercing rebel yell and leaned back and swung his weapon up, pulling the trigger as he did so, the automatic fire ripping the fabric of the night wide open, the muzzle flashes strobing the trunks of the trees.
“No!” Joe screamed, his voice drowned out by Lothar’s AR-15 and by the single, deep-throated bark of a hunting rifle from the trees. Lothar’s head snapped forward from a single high-powered bullet that hit him in the throat above his body armor and he was thrown back, his weapon firing straight up into the night sky until it jumped out of his dead hand.
Joe kicked his legs back and let himself drop heavily to the ground, his shotgun out in front of him. The muzzle flashes of Lothar’s weapon were seared blue-green into his vision in a pyrotechnic afterimage and he could see nothing, and the racketing automatic fire had made his ears ring. For good measure, he rolled to his left, hoping there would be no more shots.
“It’s Joe Pickett!” he yelled out. “Hold your fire!”
From the shadows, Chris Urman, Frank’s nephew, said, “Oh my God.”
“I’m putting down my weapon,” Joe called, peering down the barrel.
“Oh no,” Urman said. “Oh no. Who did I just hit? What have I done ? ”
Urman’s hunting rifle sailed out of the wall of pines, catching a glint of moonlight. Urman followed, holding his face in his hands.
A FULL AUTOMATIC WEAPON, at least a mile behind me, deep in the forest. What can that possibly be about? All I know is that some kind of mistake has been made, some kind of foul-up. And not by me. This is why they should never be allowed to leave the cities, where they belong, and come up here.
But in chaos, there is opportunity for the one who keeps his head.
Now I know why there are only two in the pickup truck on the horizon; it’s because the others have been tracking me. I wonder if the men in the truck heard the gunshots as well? If so, I prepare myself and ease the safety off my rifle with my thumb. . . .
“DID YOU hear that?” Robey said, sitting up straight. He’d spent the last ten minutes trying to reconcile and process what Conway had told him about Randy Pope, about the other victims. Everything he had thought about the crimes had turned out to be potentially wrong, as if the foundation he’d relied upon was not only crumbling away but had been blown