Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [94]
And then the chief would fix everything. Jimmy was sure of it.
Clint Barrigan was driving past the high school when he saw the helicopter on the parking lot. It distracted him from what he had already seen, several blocks on down the highway in the center of town: some trucks stopped in the middle of the road, and a police car parked sideways across both lanes of Main Street. That had to be trouble. Clint was already worried because he hadn’t been able to raise Eloise on the radio.
Now he hit the brakes as a man in a suit ran out from behind the helicopter, waving his arms as if he were trying to get Clint to stop. Clint did so, and as he did, he recognized that sleazy lawyer Cochrum. What was that weasel doing here in Home? Clint wondered. And did it have something to do with what was going on in the center of town? Lots of people were milling around down there, he noted. Maybe the Feds had come back to raise more hell.
Clint lowered the passenger-side window. Cochrum rested his hands on the sill and stuck his head into the car.
“Thank God you’re here, officer!” the lawyer said. “There was a lot of shooting down the street a few minutes ago, after Chief Bonner went down there.”
Alex! Clint hadn’t heard an officer-needs-assistance call, but then, he wouldn’t have with the radio out.
“Back away from the car, sir!”
Cochrum ignored the order. “Are we in any danger? Should we evacuate?” He waved a hand toward the helicopter.
“I don’t care. Get the hell out of town if you want. Just get your head out of my car!”
Clint wasn’t going to wait any longer. He stomped the gas just as Cochrum leaped back away from the patrol car. The side of the window barely cleared the lawyer’s head.
Clint had a shotgun clipped under the seat. He reached down and pulled it free as he drove one-handed toward the crossroads at the center of town. He was almost there before somebody opened fire on him. One of the shots blew a front tire on the police car, and suddenly Clint found the world revolving crazily in front of his eyes as the car skidded and then rolled. It went over twice and was upside-down when it slammed into the empty car sitting in the middle of the street.
Badly shaken up but not really hurt, Clint fumbled for the release on his seat belt as he hung there. It came loose and dropped him in an ungainly sprawl on the ceiling of the car. He heard flames crackling somewhere and knew he had to get out before one or both of the gas tanks blew up. Still clutching the shotgun, he crawled through broken glass onto the pavement. He staggered to his feet and started running, instinct making him want to get as far as he could from the burning cars.
Then men with guns loomed up in front of him. Clint raised the shotgun and yelled, “Drop those guns! Get on the ground!”
They laughed at him.
And then they shot him.
But as the high-powered slugs ripped into him, dozens of them shredding his organs, he managed to pull the trigger and send a load of buckshot into one of his killers. The blast blew the man backwards.
That was the last thing Clint saw with his eyes.
But in his mind and in his heart, for an instant he saw his wife, whom he had loved ever since they were both seniors in high school, and then he was gone.
Whoever they were, they were killing cops, Clayton Cochrum thought as he ran toward the helicopter. That reporter, Wilma What’s-her-name, and her cameraman, Bud, both looked terrified by all the shooting they had heard. Obviously not veterans of war zone journalism, Cochrum thought.
He revolved his hand over his head in a signal to the pilot. They were getting the hell out of Dodge, and the sooner the better.
Problem was, the son-of-a-bitch pilot didn’t wait. He must have been scared, too. The rotors began to turn faster, and suddenly the chopper was in the air, and the three former passengers were still on the ground. Propwash pounded down around them. Wilma was screaming something, but Cochrum couldn’t hear her over the roar of the helicopter.
The chopper lifted higher and higher, and its nose swung toward