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We started walking toward the perimeter fence and the lane. We immediately attracted the press people, who came hurrying up, especially when they saw who was with us. They were stopped some fifty feet short of the fence by two troopers. We continued.

‘‘What’s going on?’’ yelled one of the TV people.

‘‘He wants to talk to us,’’ Nancy yelled back, unable to keep a smug tone out of her voice.

‘‘Scoop city,’’ said Hester.

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Phil weakly. ‘‘Scoop city.’’

The prearranged protocol was for Phil to stand in the lane at the fence line at 1430, exactly, and Mrs. Herman Stritch was to open the door of the house, and if everything looked okay to her, she would motion Phil on toward the house. I escorted him to the right place, and then stepped back a couple of paces. I looked pointedly at my watch. 1429. In a second, Mrs. Stritch was in the doorway, dressed in blue jeans and a faded green blouse, with binoculars in her hand. She raised them to her eyes and scrutinized Phil for a long moment. Then she gave me the once-over. It was hard not to make a gesture, but I restrained myself. Using binoculars at that range let her check for possible weapons before she allowed Phil inside the perceived threat zone. Sound practice. I wondered where she’d learned that. Her graying hair looked matted down with sweat. It must have been pretty warm in the house. Good. The less comfortable, the better. Finally, she motioned him forward.

It was almost two hundred feet to the house, and it must have seemed like two thousand to Phil. I noticed he looked just a bit more apprehensive when he passed the shed where Herman had been concealed when he shot the officers. I guess I was, too.

Mrs. Stritch held up her hand. ‘‘Stop right there.’’ Loud, but calm.

Phil did.

Now what?

I heard her say something, and then Phil turned to me. ‘‘She wants you back at the lines,’’ he hollered.

‘‘Right,’’ I hollered back, and turned around and started to walk back up the lane. I heard Mrs. Stritch say ‘‘What?’’ in a loud voice. I looked back over my shoulder, and she had disappeared, I assumed into the house. Phil had stopped short of the porch by about thirty feet and was just standing there. Now what? I thought. I kept moving, but slowed a little, looking back over my shoulder.

I felt the shock wave of the first shot as much as I heard it. I hit the ground as fast as I could, at the same time trying to turn and see what was going on behind me. So I landed on my right shoulder, and just about knocked the breath from myself. My point of view wasn’t too good, but I could see Phil standing there, and I thought that they were playing with him. I sat up just as I saw him start to waver, like he was trying to turn around. Then his head got lower, and the second shot went off. This time, he dropped like a rock, disappearing from my view onto the ground just short of the porch. Just as he disappeared, a fusillade of shots came from the TAC people in the outbuildings, a few at first, then a rapid series, just like very loud popcorn. As I tried to make myself smaller, I saw, from my vantage point on the ground, pieces of the house near a window on the second floor, to the left of the doorway, begin to fly off and large gouges of raw wood appear all over the upper half of the house. The troops were trying to get somebody through the wall. The firing tapered off pretty quickly, as there was no return fire, and nobody in the house was about to show themselves as a target at that point. A weird silence settled over the farm. My ears were ringing again, but I clearly heard a dragonfly humming a few feet away. It was hot. I became aware of a woman yelling. Two of them, in fact. One was Hester.

‘‘Houseman!’’ she yelled. ‘‘You hit?’’

I sat up and shook my head. The other was Nancy. I looked back toward the lines, and saw her standing there, with Hester trying to get her to turn away. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, except for ‘‘Phil.’’

Well, shit.

I got up into a crouch, and felt faint.