and Virgil closed in, to come up on the corner of the house, where he could see both the back and one side. He moved into the trees, stumbled over a downed wire fence, and then crept fifty yards through the trees, stalking now, slow hunting, aware that time was passing, listening to the shots pounding the house.

At the end of the woodlot, he saw a sudden flash off to his left, saw a shape, heard the metallic clatter of a shell being ejected and another being loaded, in a bolt-action rifle, and waited for another flash, moving toward it. He could see a lump, wasn’t sure that it was a man, saw another flash, decided it was, and shot the man in the back. The man half stood, then pitched forward. Virgil moved up and found a body, an indistinct gray mass, trembling and kicking, as the brain died.

Got on his phone, called Coakley: she came up and said, “Hurry.”

“Everybody still upstairs?”

“Yes, but I think . . . we can smell smoke . . . I think they’re gonna try to burn us out.”

“Stay there for a minute, stay on the phone, we’re about to hose the place down.”

He looked to his left, then moved that way, slowly, slowly . . . saw another lump moving and with no alternative, called, “Jenkins?”

In reply: “Yes. We clear that way?”

“We’re clear to the corner,” Virgil said.

“There were two guys here,” Jenkins said. “They’re gone.”

“Let’s clear out the bottom floor. Find a tree and get down. Are you ready?”

“Go ahead; I’ll follow.”

Virgil got half behind a thick tree, clicked his rifle over to full auto, stood and aimed at windowsill level and lashed out with a full-auto burst, blowing the whole magazine through the house, playing it across the clapboard siding, which shuddered with the impact. As the burst ended, Jenkins opened fire, the muzzle flashes suppressed but still visible, a stuttering flash that flickered across the snow.

Virgil had just slapped the second mag into the rifle when he saw movement to his right, turned and lashed at it, couldn’t tell if he’d hit it.

Jenkins shouted, “Going around right, get them out of the house.”

“If I have to go in, I’ll go in the back door,” Virgil called back. “Keep up the pressure.” He got on the phone, and Coakley was there. “Can you make it down to the bottom floor, to the back door?”

She said, “Dunn’s hurt; he’s hit in the foot. He’s bleeding pretty bad. He can’t walk.”

There was another long stuttering burst, Jenkins working around to the right. Virgil said, “I’m coming through the back door. I’ll be there in a minute or two. Don’t shoot me.”

“There’s a fire—”

“I’m coming.”

First he moved down to his right, where he’d seen the movement. Didn’t see more. Moved slowly up, still didn’t see anything. Had he imagined it? Possible. Had to make a decision, and made it.

SCARED OUT OF HIS MIND, Virgil ran down the tree line, banging through the underbrush and ricocheting off the smaller trees that he couldn’t see coming, until he was even with the back door, and then dropped on the ground, silent, listening for reaction. Somebody was shooting one of the semiautos, but most of the other guns were silent, and then there was a BOOM-BOOM on the far side, a shotgun, and he feared for Jenkins, but then got an answering burst. Jenkins wasn’t dead yet; other than that, there were no guarantees.

A truck backed wildly down the driveway, and another followed it, and men were screaming. He was directly at the back of the house now, couldn’t see anybody in either direction—heard another short burst from Jenkins, now firing down the far side of the house—and dashed across the open space to the back door.

He kicked it once, as hard as he’d ever kicked a door in his life, felt it sag, kicked it a second time and the lock and latch blew open, and he was inside, at the bottom of a four-step set of stairs. He climbed the stairs, leading with the muzzle of the M16, did a quick peek, saw that he was coming into the back of the kitchen. The kitchen floor was smeared with blood. Light from heavy flames, and a boiling black smoke, poured from the living room beyond.

There were no more bullets going through the house. He heard another burst from Jenkins’s rifle, and thought that the farmers around the place were probably more worried about being attacked