Deadlock

  Something other than bullets struck the body on top of him. It rolled off and landed in the dirt in front of Hutch’s face.

  You gotta be kidding, he thought. He grabbed it and tossed it into the woods with one swift motion.

  The grenade exploded.

  The shock of it should have kept him in place for at least a few seconds, but he knew the soldier would have taken cover, if only for those same few seconds. While dirt, trees, and shrapnel were still striking the building and raining down, Hutch shoved the corpse away and got his feet under him. He leaped toward the motel and pressed himself against the bricks. Crouching low, he began edging away from the bathroom window. He was torn between keeping an eye on the window and watching for things underfoot that could give him away—an empty potato chip bag, a twig.

  His ears were ringing. He hoped the grenade had somehow hindered the soldier’s hearing as well. Probably not, considering the helmet. Regardless, he had to do what he had to do. He paused to eject the empty magazine, retrieve a full one from his pocket, and push it into the handle of the pistol. He flipped a thumb switch and moved the slide back into place, automatically chambering a round.

  The machine gun clattered against the windowsill, sliding out. It pointed at the body, then moved up and down, left and right, but never close enough to the building to threaten Hutch. The soldier’s next logical move would be to lean out and inspect the area closest to the building.

  Keeping the pistol pointed at the window, Hutch slid silently along the wall away from it.

  He reached his destination: one of the downspouts. It looked heavier duty than the ones on his house. He pushed the fingers of his free hand under it and flexed. The pipe didn’t budge.

  Decision time. Wait for the helmet to appear, put a couple holes into it—he was feeling optimistic at the moment—or start climbing.

  A sound drew his attention toward the far corner of the building, the way he had gone when he’d sneaked up on Jim. Darkness that way. Shadows. Trees. A shadow shifted, moved. Man-shaped. It was the other soldier.

  He had stepped out from around the bend in the building and was walking toward the edge of the woods. Smart: the greatest threat of attack was from the woods. The face of the helmet rotated toward Hutch. The man barely gave the area a glance. He must have been confident his partner had it covered.

  Knowing something about Page’s passion for technology, Hutch suspected the helmets these soldiers wore were decked out in the latest battle gear: communications, night vision, infrared, maybe targeting matrices. If the man had focused his attention on the firebreak—which was essentially a straight alley along the back of the motel—he would have spotted Hutch in a heartbeat.

  Something in the woods had the soldier down there excited. He ran to the edge, fired a few rounds. Hutch hoped it was an animal that had drawn his attention and not Jim.

  Fifteen feet away, a helmet protruded from the bathroom window—way out, as though the guy was about to climb through. Hutch’s heart ricocheted off his sternum and lodged in his throat. The man pulled his machine gun through. He held his position, leaning out, and aimed into the woods toward his partner. He was covering his teammate, who had obviously communicated his sighting of something among the trees.

  The soldier in the window pulled his trigger. Hutch could hear, but not see, the rounds cut through leaves and branches. The soldier shifted his aim to the woods on the other side of his partner. He sent a few rounds into that area as well.

  Hutch guessed the soldier was completely engrossed in protecting his teammate, especially given that they’d already lost a man. His ears would be attuned to communication coming from the fighter on the front lines, or too desensitized by the constant firing to detect subtle noises.

  Hutch pushed the pistol into his waistband, slipped in front of the downspout, and started climbing.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The soldier’s eyelids fluttered. He tried to lift his head, but it fell back to the floor, and he was still.

  Laura watched him, tapped him with her toe. When she was sure he was unconscious, she started for the children. They’d stopped at the door to watch. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Dillon released Macie’s arm. He took several tentative steps toward his mother, meeting her in the center of the bedroom. The whole time, he held his eyes on the soldier.

  Laura brushed past him, sweeping her fingers through his hair. “Come on, honey. There’re other people in the house.”

  He gripped her arm, spinning her toward him. His expression was ancient: fear and concern. “We can’t leave him,” he said.

  “The soldier? Yes, we can.” She reached for him.

  He backed away from her. “No!”

  “Dillon, listen,” she said. She was not sure if she should keep her patience with him or be crazy-impatient to get all of them out the door ahead of the other soldiers. “We don’t have time for this. That boy—”

  She immediately regretted the word, which seemed to support Dillon’s argument. But he was so young. “That man tried to kill us. His friends are still trying to kill us. One of them took Logan.”

  Behind her Macie said, “Logan? They took him?” She started to cry.

  Laura held up her hand to the girl. “It’ll be okay, sweetie. Everything will work out.” It seemed less of a lie than Logan will be fine or We’ll get him back. She wanted both to be true.

  “Mom,” Dillon said, “we can’t leave him. He asked us to take him.”

  “He also asked me to shoot him. Should I do that?” She turned toward Macie and the patio door. Conversation over.

  “Mom, wait!”

  “Dillon!” They had been keeping their voices low, but she was ready to lose it. “There are men out there looking for us. They want to kill us or take us. Either way, I don’t like it.”

  Her heart caught the full impact of Dillon’s puppy-dog sadness. She hated when he did that. More softly she said, “Even if we wanted to, we can’t bring him. He’s out cold. He’s a grown man.” Sort of. Her eyes pleaded with Dillon to understand.

  “You can do it,” he said. “You’ve hauled whole caribou miles out of the woods.”

  She gave her son a crooked smile. “They were gutted and quartered.”

  Dillon began backing up toward the soldier. “He wanted you to kill him or take him. He wasn’t hurting us.”

  Laura pressed her lips tight and closed her eyes. She could thrash Dillon about now, but she also knew he was right. She remembered Julian. He had been a young teen forced to go with Declan on a murderous rampage. She and Hutch had lamented his fate many times.

  Now she had an opportunity to help someone like Julian. Could she walk away? Just reduce the boy’s obvious anguish to sad conversations for the rest of her life?

  Who was she kidding, thinking about “opportunity” and “rest of her life”? Her own survival was questionable. But between Dillon and her memories of Julian, she knew she could not leave the young soldier.

  She strode past Dillon. “Get the door. And not another word.”

  She listened at the door to the hallway. Noises deeper in the house. She knelt beside the soldier. She unclipped his helmet’s chinstrap and pushed away the pieces of helmet. Wires connected the chunks like sinew. She unbuckled his utility belt, checked its contents. Couple meal bars. A wad of twenty-dollar bills. A coil of large zip ties—lightweight, disposable handcuffs. She slipped everything into her pants pockets.

  She examined his bulletproof vest. It looked heavy. She considered wearing it herself, but wasn’t sure she could handle the weight on top of carrying the soldier. It would be too cumbersome for Macie. She unstrapped it and tugged it off the boy.

  “Dillon,” she said, “come put this on.” She tossed it toward him.

  She stood and looked down at the boy. At least he wasn’t fat. She planted her knee by his hip and grabbed one of his wrists. She swung it around her shoulder. She slipped her arm behind one of his knees and lifted. Tom had taught
her the technique. It distributed the body’s weight across both shoulders and her upper back. Since the hand of the arm entwining his leg also held his wrist across her chest, it left her with a free hand. She rose, groaning quietly. She took a step. Not too bad.

  Okay, she thought. My throat feels like raw meat every time I breathe, my neck’s on fire, and I have a hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight on my shoulders. No problem.

  Never mind killers were after them. Icing on the cake. She stumbled toward the door. “Macie, you okay?”

  “I want Logan.”

  “Me too. Let’s get out of here first. Then we’ll figure out how to get him back. Okay?”

  Macie nodded.

  Laura smiled at Dillon. “Let’s do it.”

  Dwarfed by the bulletproof vest, with arrows protruding behind his head, a bow over one shoulder, a rifle over the other, and a bow bag in his lap, Dillon more closely resembled a pack mule than a boy. Scratch that. He looked like the personification of resolve.

  He opened the patio door.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hutch paused under the motel’s eaves. He would have to reach out to the metal gutter along the roof’s edge, drop away from the wall, and pull himself up. The soldier from the bathroom was still looking the other direction, covering his partner who had stepped into the woods.

  Nothing good would come from waiting, so he just did it. Hanging from the gutter, he felt exposed. With the optical aids he was sure the soldiers possessed, he would be impossible to miss if either one glanced his way. He wanted to swing his leg up, hook his heel on the gutter. He imagined the sound that would make and opted instead to pull himself straight up using only arm strength. He rose over the gutters and folded his torso onto the roof.

  The roof was pitched to a center peak. The asphalt tiles were gritty with pebbles; he wouldn’t slide off. He could not see the soldier protruding from the bathroom window, but he had a direct line of sight to the one coming out of the woods. That meant Hutch was equally visible to him—more so, considering the helmet’s technology. But the soldier did not act alarmed. He simply continued his pursuit of whatever he had seen in the woods. He appeared to be casually strolling along the tree line, heading in Hutch’s direction.

  Maybe a ruse, Hutch thought. Waiting to get closer before he shoots.

  Perhaps the soldier had already informed his teammate of Hutch’s location. Since Hutch could no longer see the man in the window, he couldn’t know if he was still there or sneaking around the front to box him in.

  He tugged the pistol out of his waistband. Something on it caught on his pants. The gun came out of his hand. It hit the roof, clanged into the gutter, and flipped over the edge.

  By the woods, the soldier’s helmeted face snapped up to Hutch. The man started to swing his rifle around, but the soldier in the bathroom window must have still been there, and responded more quickly: right where the pistol had disappeared, bullets ripped through the gutter. They tore it into shreds, then began punching through the asphalt tiles. They marched up the roof toward Hutch.

  He thought he was farther away from the edge than the width of the eaves, but he wasn’t going to hang around to find out. He was scampering up toward the peak when bullets tore into the roof all around him. He glanced to see muzzle flashes from the soldier by the woods. As he rolled over the peak, he saw a second soldier—the man from the bathroom—backpedaling across the firebreak, trying to get a better aim.

  Good, Hutch thought, if he’s there, then he’s not out front. . . . And he wasn’t in the room to shoot at him through the ceiling. The two soldiers would have to either climb back through a bathroom window or race around the building. Either way bought Hutch some time.

  Give me a minute . . . thirty seconds . . . twenty.

  He’d take any amount of time right now—and he’d make the most of it. Dying here was not an option. Something was happening back home. His son was in danger. Macie. Dillon. Laura. It didn’t matter that he might be in a worse situation than they were. He had to reach them. Help them. He had to know.

  He stood and began a stuttering, controlled descent to the front edge of the roof. The shooting behind him stopped. He thought of the grenade, wondered if that was coming next.

  He listened for its thump against the roof. What he heard was a car engine turning over and over, trying to start. A flash of red caught his eye—the same glowing trees that had alerted him to Mr. Mustang’s presence. And there he was now, behind the wheel, his eyes big in the glow of the dome lamp because he hadn’t bothered to shut the door.

  Hutch knew one soldier, probably both, would be coming around that way any second. He waved both arms at Jim. The engine caught, and the car lurched forward. Its rear tires spun on gravel, then found the traction it needed to shoot across the parking lot. The driver’s door slammed shut.

  “Hey!” Hutch yelled, waving.

  Jim didn’t see him up on the roof.

  He should have jumped down, but it was too late now. “Hey! Jim!”

  The Mustang was angling toward the county road that ran in front of the motel. It braked hard and stopped. Jim’s face appeared in the passenger window. He was leaning over to look up at Hutch.

  Hutch beckoned to him, but he would not have blamed Jim for speeding off. The backup lights came on. The Mustang moved as fast in reverse as it had when it was leaving the parking lot. Hutch grabbed hold of the gutter, swung down, and dropped. He had to jump to keep from being nailed by the car’s rear bumper. Jim opened the passenger door, and he jumped in.

  “Go! Go!” Hutch said. “They’re coming!”

  Jim punched it and crossed the parking lot diagonally, building speed.

  The van seemed to come out of nowhere. It pulled into the Mustang’s path and stopped. A black-helmeted soldier looked out the driver’s side window at them.

  Jim slammed on the brakes. Hutch was able to yell only “Don’t—!” before flying into the dash. He pushed himself back and said, “Don’t stop! Go around! Go around!”

  Jim looked dazed, wide-eyed and slack jawed.

  They were thirty feet from the side of the van. The driver jumped out. He had his machine gun aimed at the windshield before Hutch’s mind registered the weapon.

  “Go!” he yelled again.

  The windshield spiderwebbed as holes opened up in it.

  The Mustang shot forward. Hutch caught a glimpse of Jim’s crazy-scared face. He braced his arms against the dash. The broken windshield made the gunman appear fragmented, as though he were not one but hundreds, shooting at them.

  The car slammed into the shooter and van. The impact shattered the windshield completely. Pellets of safety glass, like drops of water, cascaded over Hutch. His arms buckled, and his forehead struck the dash. He squinted one eye through the windshield opening. The soldier slumped over the crumpled hood. Steam hissed out, making the body appear to be smoldering. Hutch’s other eye was gone. He wiped at it and realized it was only blood from a cut in his brow.

  A raspy hiss came from Jim. He was slumped against the door, blood on his face, more on his chest. Hutch grabbed his shoulder. “Jim, we gotta go.” He looked beyond the injured man to the side of the motel. The soldiers had not yet appeared. He knew they would be there any second.

  “Jim?”

  The only response was a wheezing breath in, a gurgling breath out.

  Hutch saw blood growing on the man’s shirt. It wasn’t pouring from his head as Hutch had first thought. He yanked Jim’s shirt aside, popping buttons. A bullet had struck him midchest.

  “Jim.”

  Hutch had to shoulder his door open. He ran around and opened Jim’s, and caught the man as he fell out. The small window behind the door shattered. Apparently the soldiers had made it around to the front of the motel, but Hutch didn’t have time to look.

  He pulled Jim out of the car and dragged him to the front. Either the van had slid away or the Mustang had bounced back, but three feet separated the front of the Mustang f
rom the side of the van. The collision had damaged the larger vehicle’s sheet metal behind the driver’s door. Hutch lifted Jim in, letting him fall between the front captain’s chairs.

  A bullethole appeared in the windshield, then another. One soldier was running toward them from the side of the motel. Another from Hutch’s room.

  Hutch slammed the transmission into drive, cranked the wheel right, and stepped on it. The van spun away from the gunmen. Its tires bumped up onto the county road. He almost careened off the other side, but got control in time to steer it back into a lane. As he accelerated past the motel sign, a rear window shattered. Bullets plunked into the back and side. They kept striking the van for a lot longer than Hutch would have imagined. Finally the barrage stopped, and the light of the sign was a firefly in his rearview mirror.

  TWENTY-NINE

  With the soldier draped over her shoulders like a shawl, Laura stepped off the patio and onto the backyard grass. Macie stopped in front of her.

  “What about the car?” the girl said.

  The weight of the soldier was already cramping Laura’s shoulders and numbing her right arm. She considered turning him around to put the bulk of his weight to the other shoulder, but juggling him back and forth every couple minutes wasn’t practical. She decided to tough it out a little longer.

  “It’s in the garage on the other side of the house,” she whispered. “The other soldiers are looking for us. We can’t risk getting to it.”

  “But where are we going?” Macie said.

  “Just . . . away. And, honey, I know we have to get Logan. That’s step two, and we’re only on step one.”

  She wasn’t happy about it, but Macie said, “Okay.”

  They were halfway to the back fence when Dillon grabbed her arm. He said, “Mom, listen!”

  All she could hear was her own heavy breathing. “What is it?”

  “A siren.”

  Then she heard it. It was getting louder. She could see the street in the space between houses. A streetlight shined on the blacktop, sidewalk, and some of the yard.