The Ranger - Ace Atkins [105]
“They’re not going anywhere,” Quinn said.
“I want you to blast Gowrie’s ass.”
“How you doin’, Boom?” Quinn asked, passing the veterans’ monuments, with old artillery parked at the base, an American flag and a POW flag flying overhead.
“I think I like being a deputy.”
“Better than jail?” Lillie asked.
“Better than jail,” Boom said.
The monuments had so many names etched in granite from World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and what they were calling the Global War on Terror. Six names added in the last ten years. Quinn knew them all.
The four-sided town clock sat in front of the old five-and-dime, still working, reading nearly three o’clock.
The helicopter beat overhead. The police sirens came from all directions.
Someone had cut the power to the service station, and Gowrie’s boys met up in the candy aisle, Gowrie talking about how the government had wanted to implant microchips in every citizen but had to settle for digital watches. “That’s why you won’t catch me wearing jack shit.”
“Just askin’ the time,” Ditto said.
As soon as he’d seen Lena, Gowrie had smiled like he’d just won the Tennessee Lottery, reaching for her and the baby and telling them they were having a hell of a party at Dixie Gas today. He offered her some chicken wings and beer. “You just what we needed.”
Ditto took her to the back of the store by the beer coolers, wanting to ask her what in the hell she had just done. He had the matter well in hand and she just strolls on into this situation. But he didn’t speak while Gowrie could listen, waiting till Gowrie got off his ass and walked to the edge of the big window facing the pumps.
Gowrie spotted ten patrol cars barricading the path from the station, about three hundred feet from the door.
“Some fun,” Gowrie said. “Y’all ready?”
The phone to the store kept on ringing till Gowrie shot it and started to prowl around and smile, saying all the training at the compound was coming to a head. He said once they got in their vehicles, using the girl and baby as a shield, they could bust right through the barrier and shoot down a couple cops, too.
Gowrie hated cops.
Dittto recalled one plan he had involved them in, blowing up a police station in Memphis. Gowrie got real excited about it one day after church, and then the idea seemed to slip his mind.
“You love her?”
Ditto looked up to see Charley Booth, working on a Hershey bar in one hand and a sack of peanuts in the other. Lena said, “Ptttt,” and turned her head.
“That’s no concern of yours,” Ditto said.
“That’s my baby she’s holdin’.”
“This what you wanted for your baby, you dumb shit?”
Charley Booth leaned down and whispered, “Not really what I was aiming for.”
“Y’all shut the hell up,” Gowrie called from the front of the store. “I think they want to talk, lay out those terms and bullshit. Well, they can suck my ass. I’ll kill everyone in here if they keep crowding me.”
Daddy Gowrie had found a spot up by the cash register, where he thumbed through porno mags and drank a beer, every so often giving a low whistle and saying, “Hot dang.”
Ditto looked to Lena and mouthed the word “Why?”
Boom rested the deer rifle in the open window of a sheriff’s office patrol car and smiled.
“You got him?” Lillie asked.
“I do.”
“I figure you take out Gowrie and we shoot the windows in with some tear gas,” Lillie said. “How’s that sound?”
“That’ll work,” Quinn said.
“Hold on,” Boom said, peering through the scope. “Y’all know they got a girl in there with a baby?”
“Shit,” Lillie said. “Your friend?”
Quinn took the field glasses Lillie passed to him and watched the girl arguing with that boy Ditto and some skinny little white boy with jug ears.
“Yep.”
“Shit,” Lillie said.
“This complicates things,” Quinn said.
“I can take out Gowrie,” Boom said. “What do you say, Lillie? Shit.”
“What?” she asked.
“Son of a bitch moved.”
Quinn handed her the