a few hundred feet up. She couldn’t reach it with that pistol, even if she tried, and he couldn’t with the shotgun.”
“Something’s going to happen, I don’t think there’s time,” Bob said. “I’m getting really fuckin’ sweaty here. Somebody wipe my forehead, I’m gonna mist up the lens.”
Tremanty handed a radio to Lucas and said, “Call the chopper.” He produced a handkerchief, and as Lucas thumbed the call button, Tremanty wiped Bob’s forehead. Lucas called the chopper, told them what they needed.
“Two minutes,” the pilot said.
* * *
—
COX SHOUTED, “It’s mostly one-dollar bills, you big fat chump.”
Deese: “Take a bunch, run over to the Lexus, and take off. There are license plates there in the truck. Put them on the car, drive up to Reno or back to LA.”
“You’ll shoot me.”
“No I won’t. I promise,” Deese shouted.
“You liar.”
The truck was only ten feet from the door of the trailer, and Deese was dying in there. He had to get out, one way or another, and the damned Airstream only had one door. One of the windows had to be an escape hatch, he thought, but he didn’t know which one. And the trailer was so beat up, it might not even open.
He shook his head, made sure the safety was off on the Mossberg, then rolled into the open door and fired three rounds directly into the driver’s-side door of the truck and then rolled back behind the wall. One second later, a single shot blew past his face. He scrabbled back six feet.
He’d missed, somehow, and the bitch almost killed him. And even if she hadn’t, he thought, the heat soon would. Had she gotten out of the truck? He risked a peek at the window and, sure enough, saw her looking toward the trailer door, over the top of the truck bed.
Then she panicked. As he was peeking through the window, he saw her aiming the gun that way and he dove behind the refrigerator as she peppered the trailer with bullets.
Then they stopped, and he thought, Out of ammo.
He crawled back toward the door, peeked, saw her running toward the Lexus. He pushed himself up, stepped into the door, and swung the shotgun toward her.
* * *
—
LUCAS SAID, “Take him, take him.”
Tremanty: “Wound him.”
Bob said, “Fuck!” and pulled the trigger.
As he pulled the trigger, Deese took a step down to the ground.
Deese didn’t know what had happened; he didn’t feel any immediate pain, but his leg blew up beneath him.
* * *
—
AS DEESE FELL, the woman got to the Lexus, which was still running, jammed it into gear, and hit the gas. Lucas said, “Tires.”
Bob took his time, fired once, and the front tire went expensively flat. Not explosively flat, but with a genteel release of air pressure. Cox kept going, throwing a ton of dust in the air.
“Run-flats,” Bob said in disgust.
“Take another one,” Tremanty said.
Bang! And the rear tire was gone, but the car rolled on. Bang! And an off-side tire went. They were so preoccupied that they never heard the helicopter until it passed overhead, got in front of Cox, and slowly lowered itself until it was hovering fifteen feet above the road and directly in front of her, a menacing dragonfly to her bug. The Lexus stopped and a moment later the driver’s-side window dropped and a hand poked out and waved. She’d quit.
“What happened to Deese?” Bob asked.
They all looked back to the trailer. Deese had vanished.
“I hit him hard. Maybe too hard,” Bob said. “He was stepping down, I was aiming at his knee but hit him in the groin area instead. He’s gonna lose the leg, I think. And if I took out his femoral artery, he’s dead. Shit. He fell right into the slug.”
“Crawled back inside?” Tremanty suggested.
“I think he crawled underneath,” Lucas said. He got on the radio to Rae, told her what had happened.
“He didn’t crawl out here. I can see the whole back of the trailer,” she said. “I could lay a few rounds in there, in the dirt, see if it chases him out.”
“Hold off,” Lucas said. “We should get this woman out of the way. We know Deese’s hurt, he’s not going anywhere.”
“Not to say that he couldn’t kill you with that shotgun,” Bob said. He was watching the trailer through the scope, his finger hovering a quarter inch off the trigger.
* * *
—
DEESE WAS under the trailer, which was, in a way, a relief, cooler than inside. On the other hand, somebody—he had