Spider mountain

14

We spent the next morning going through her version of the report to make sure it generally correlated with what I had said. We didn’t want them to be identical, but we didn’t want to leave any big discrepancies through which work-averse civil serpents could slither out, either. We kicked around several ideas for going after Grinny Creigh amp; Co., but none of them sounded like a winner. Just after noon, however, Carrie got a call on her cell from Bigger John. It seemed that Sheriff Hayes had contacted him and wanted a meet with Carrie at the Hayes family home place up in the mountains above Marionburg. She said she’d do it as long as both John and Luke came along. John relayed that stipulation, and Hayes apparently agreed to that. She said she’d meet John in town at four that afternoon.

I asked her if she wanted me to come along, too. She did, but not actually with her and the two deputies. “How’s about you play backup?” she said. “Follow us up there but stay out of sight. If we get into trouble, you ride to the rescue and cover yourself in glory.”

“You don’t mean try to tail you on a mountain road, do you?” I asked. I still remembered her version of a casual night drive in the mountains.

“No; you drive too slow. I’ll tell the brothers Big that you’ll be in the back-field. I trust them. I’ll keep you advised of what we’re doing and where we are, and maybe you can even get a tactical observation spot on us when we meet with Hayes.”

“Hopefully it’s just Hayes,” I said.

“Either way, it would be good to know you’re out there, and Hayes, of course, doesn’t have to know you’re there unless things get tense.”

“You know, you don’t really have the authority to deal with Hayes,” I said. “I mean, suppose he cops to being involved in this kid thing-it’s not like you can bring him in, or make any promises.”

“The Big brothers are sworn officers. They can bring him in,” she said. “Besides, I have a feeling he’s not calling to make any kind of a deal. I think he wants to get right with God over what he and Mingo’ve been doing.”

“I don’t know, Carrie,” I said. “I know you think that about Hayes. On the other hand, it could be a nasty setup, with Hayes on the porch and Mingo and his crew waiting in the weeds.”

“Why?” she asked. “You’re the one he thinks saw him at the hospital. You didn’t say anything about me being there, did you?”

“No, I didn’t, but he knows you were there being treated, and we’ve been operating together. If he thinks I’ve blown town, you’re the loose end at hand, so to speak.”

“I’ll chance it,” she said. “We’re not going to bust Mingo and his operation on our own, and so far the heavies, as Baby calls them, aren’t doing squat. If Hayes wants to repent, maybe he can get us in. I still have this terrible feeling there’s a clutch of children being held somewhere for one final ‘harvest.’”

On that happy note, we stopped yapping and made our preparations. I followed Carrie into town in a loose tail. She met up with John and his brother at the sheriff’s office, and she followed their cruiser out of town. I had the dogs, my Remington rifle, Nathan’s ten-gauge and a whole box of extra-dry shells, the spotting scope, and enough rifle ammo for a fair-sized firefight. I felt better that both the Big brothers were coming along. Carrie called me on my cell phone as we left town.

“We’re proceeding to the Hayes home place,” she said. “It’s about ten miles out of town in the direction of the Robbins County line. Apparently there’s the original house, a modern cabin, and an abandoned mine on the property.”

“Have you talked directly to Sheriff Hayes?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “John called him and told him we were starting up.”

“And they know I’m in the picture?”

“The brothers do, Hayes does not. Luke and John were cool with that. They said they’re not expecting trouble.”

“That’s when trouble usually rears its ugly head,” I said, and hung up. She’d been an SBI bureaucrat for most of her career. I, on the other hand, had been a street cop and an operational major crimes detective for most of mine. She was expecting a civilized meeting. I was expecting an ambush. I would really have liked to be able to do a prebrief with the Bigs, but they were in a separate vehicle, so off we went.

On the way up I got a call from Mose Walsh. He wanted to know if I’d heard about the sheriff going walkabout. I said yes.

“I was sitting next to some off-duty deputies last night for supper,” he said. “One of’em said this supposedly had something to do with M. C. Mingo and Grinny Creigh.”

“That’s not news,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “But if people are talking like that, it’s gonna get back to Robbins County. And if this is about selling kids, whoever’s holding the product may just panic.”

“Good point,” I said. “Things are in motion, so, please, keep listening.”

I followed them up into the actual mountains, and finally they turned off onto a well-maintained dirt road. I lingered on the main road for about five minutes, assuming there was only the one road going up. I assumed wrong, as usual. A quarter mile into the woods the dirt road diverged into two branches, one going right and up, the other going left and down. I quickly tried to call Carrie. No signal. I got out and played Indian, trying to see where the fresh tire tracks were. I failed Indian. The shepherds were no help-they had no scent to focus on. I stood there, listening for the sounds of vehicles, but heard only a few crows laughing at my Indian act. I remembered why I used to like shooting crows.

It was a dirt road, I kept telling myself. There had to be tracks. The shepherds were pretending to look for something, but I knew they were mostly just confused. I walked up the hill on the right-hand track, assuming the home place would be on high ground. The surface of the road was actually hardpan, with lots of shattered flat rocks and even some shale. It was showing zero tire tracks, and I was getting antsier by the minute.

I walked back down to the dividing point, listened again to make sure no one else was coming up the road from the two-lane, and then tried going down. Fifty feet in I found a wet spot where a tiny creek was soaking through the dirt road. I finally passed Indian-tire tracks at last. I went back to the Suburban and called in the mutts, and we headed down, going slow with all the windows open. After another half mile it looked like the trees were thinning out ahead. I didn’t like being below whatever it was I was going to be watching, but this branch of the road had gone ninety degrees away from the upper branch, so it was going to be low ground or no ground. I parked the Suburban, hiding it as best I could behind some bushy pines. I rousted out the shepherds, the rifle, and the scope and headed into the woods on the left-hand side of the dirt lane. About three hundred yards in I stepped over a small creek and could finally begin to see the Hayes home place through the trees.

I discovered that I was approaching from below a long earthen dam, behind which there was a three-acre pond, formed in the valley cut out by a creek. At the other end of the pond there was a very pretty log cabin, which looked to have been one of those modern kit jobs, as opposed to an original rustic. There was a detached frame garage, behind which I could see Carrie’s vehicle, the brothers’ cruiser, and presumably Sheriff Hayes’s vehicle parked on one side of the cabin. To the left and slightly above the cabin was a graying, narrow, three-story house made of rough-hewn timbers. It was pretty obviously long since abandoned, with a slumping roof, gaping window frames, and a front porch that was down on the ground. There were several old outbuildings surrounding the house in similar states of ivy-draped decomposition.

Above and beyond the house, cabin, and pond, the land rose steeply on either side of the creek that supplied the pond, and I could see a mound of tailings halfway up the hill to the left, along with some rusting machinery stands and a few disintegrating mine carts. I was too low to see the actual mine entrance, but it had to be up there by those tailings. The mine was probably three hundred feet higher than the cabin and the house. There were no pastures or any other signs of farming, and the enveloping mountain forest was slowly but surely reclaiming the entire place.

I moved to the left along the grass face of the dam until I had a better view of the vehicles and the slopes to my right, where presumably that other road came out. We were miles from the Creigh place over in the next county, but not very far from the county line, as best I could tell. The Hayes place was on an eastern slope, and the late-afternoon shadows were beginning to creep down the higher ridges as the sun began to set. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no cover where I was crouching, and the slanting sunlight was full in my eyes. I had to move.

I signaled the dogs, and we went back down the dam face to the outflow creek and then down the long gulley below the dam until I could no longer see the cabin or the falling-down house. Then we cut directly south, into the woods. My objective was to circle the whole place until I came out up at the level of the abandoned mine. From there, I should be in the shadow of the setting sun and able to see the cabin, all the vehicles, and anyone coming down through the opposite woods.

It took me almost a half hour to get in position, as the woods on the south side of the property were thick with wait-a-minute vines and stands of hawthorn. I didn’t make any decent progress until I crossed a narrow track that presumably led up to the old mine. There were railroad ties and a badly rusted cog rail on one side of the track, so I followed that up until I reached a small plateau cut back into the face of the hill. The mine entrance was a rectangular black hole, framed in large timbers and cut into the side of the hill, with rusting narrow-gauge tracks coming out toward the tailings dump. The hill rose above the mine entrance two hundred feet or so.

There was more extinct machinery littering this area, and the flattened remains of a sorting shed to one side, which is where the cog line terminated. The little plateau was higher above the house and cabin than I had estimated, but the position was a perfect place to watch the cabin. The setting sun was behind me now, and the light was strong enough to penetrate the woods on the other side of the pond. We had maybe two hours before the virtual sunset caused by the mountains.

I used the scope to make a visual sweep of those woods and the hills above, but saw no sign of any creeping Creighs. The shepherds went exploring, which I figured was okay because we could not be seen from the cabin. Frack poked his nose into the mine entrance but came right back out, while Frick went rat hunting along the remains of the sorting shed, whose metal roof was now only about two feet off the ground. I wondered what had happened to the mine, whether it had simply played out or flooded, which was what usually shut these smaller operations down. There was enough old machinery scattered around the entrance apron to indicate there’d been a fairly good vein down there.

I crept over to one side of the tailings pile and set the scope up on the cabin itself. The front porch overlooking the pond was in shadow and out of my direct view, but the side and back porches were fully illuminated by the bright yellow setting sun. There was a lot of firewood stacked along the back porch.. All the windows were covered with curtains, so I couldn’t see anything inside the house. The immediate yard was neatly tended, and there was none of the junk and trash I’d seen decorating all too many of the places in these hills. 1 envied the sheriff and his tranquility up here, although he probably wasn’t enjoying much tranquility right now.

I swept the scope back over the far slopes again, cruising optically over all the good hiding places. Frack came over and sat down next to me. If I was watching, he would watch, too. It was what he did best, sit down and look at things with those amber wolf eyes, which was why he saw the problem before I did. He gave a small woof, and I looked over at him to see what was up. He was staring down at the pond, so I swung the scope over to the pond and the dam and landed the lens right on the face of a man. He was lying prone on the face of the dam, just his head showing as he swept the cabin area with binoculars. I thought for a moment we were looking right at each other, but he was focusing on the cabin. His lenses flashed in the setting sun, while mine should have been in deep shadow. I told Frack to lie down and backed away from the rim of the tailings apron so that just my scope was sticking out into the black hat’s field of view.

I’d assumed they’d come from the high ground because that’s what you did if you could. Instead, they’d probably come up the same damned road I’d walked. Assumptions were kicking my ass this afternoon. I wondered if they’d found my Suburban.

I refocused the scope for longer range and swept it through the trees and underbrush beyond the pond, and finally caught a metallic glint through the leaves. After a minute of study, I concluded that it was probably a slick-back Crown Vic. That meant Mingo’s crew was here. I pointed back onto the dam, but the watcher had disappeared. That had not been Mingo looking though the binocs, so I had to assume at least two potential shooters, maybe as many as four. I swept back up to the far slope just to make sure there weren’t twenty of the bastards out there, and then remembered there was a fair-sized hill above me and the mine. I rolled slowly over onto my back and traversed the scope up along the ridge above the mine entrance. Nothing visible, but I realized I was pretty exposed out there.

I called Frick quietly, and then the dogs and I moved underneath the ruins of the trestle over which the tip cars had been dumped onto the tailings pile. A rusting mine car was growing into the ground at the base of the trestle, and that should protect me if Mingo got a shooter up there on the ridge above the mine. I still had a good view of the pond, but I’d be more exposed to fire from down there than I’d been when lying flat on the ground at the rim of the mine plateau. Keeping the scope pointed downhill, I began to use my boots to gouge out a shallow foxhole in the tailings debris. Then I saw the head again, rising like a round periscope above the top of the dam, binocs glued to its face. I slid the Remington over and tried its scope. I had the sudden urge to pop this guy, but it would have been a tough shot, downhill on about a twenty-five-degree slope, at an unknown range, and over water just to make things harder. I bolted a round into the chamber and the dogs moved away-they hated the noise of gunfire.

I put the rifle down and went back to the spotting scope. The head was gone again, but I caught a quick glimpse of a rifle barrel about twenty feet to the watcher’s right. Okay, at least two. I did another sweep of the opposite hill and then checked my back. Nobody visible, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another tactically capable shooter up there who was waiting for the same shot I was waiting for. Then I heard a vehicle coming, and whoever was driving was making no attempt to be stealthy about it. A moment later another cop car eased into view on the lower road. I recognized it as M. C. Mingo’s personal car. He drove right up to the point where the dam melded back into the front lawn. He turned his car around to point back down the road, shut down, got out, took a quick look around, and then walked up onto the porch and out of my line of sight.

Coming the way he had, he had to have seen those shooters plastered against the face of the dam, which confirmed that those were his people. No big news there, but it also meant that when he was done with his visit, he’d be signaling those guys to either back off or get on with an attack of some kind once he was deniably clear of the scene.

I tried my cell phone again, but the right-side signal panel was blank. Useless damn things. Now I had to figure out how to warn the people inside without giving away my own position. I could try to sneak down there, but if the guy with binocs went up-scope at the wrong moment, he would warn Mingo and whatever was going to happen would start inside the cabin. Not a good plan. I did my scope sweep of the surrounding area again, and this time spotted a figure moving through the trees high on the opposite ridgeline above the cabin. It looked like he was trying to get into a position to cover the cabin’s back door. Then Frick gave a low growl and stared hard behind me.

I rolled over slowly to the left, making sure both dogs were down on the ground with me. I peered around the nearest trestle post and saw a fourth man half-sliding, half-walking down the hill above the mine entrance. He was carrying a rifle, and he was paying close attention to where he was putting his feet, which was probably why he hadn’t spotted me. It looked like he was aiming for the mine entrance as a hiding place. He would have been in full view of the cabin had anyone been looking, but my guess was that Mingo was keeping everyone inside fully occupied. I mentally chastised the Bigs for not posting a lookout.

I rolled back the other way so that I’d be out of sight when he finally got down to the plateau, and then the dogs and I crawled up toward the lip of the tailings slope right where the dump trestle projected out over the pile. We watched from the edge, hopefully well out of sight of the men hiding down on the dam. The shooter finally reached the plateau in a shower of loose dirt and rocks, which dumped him unceremoniously on the ground twenty feet to the right of the mine entrance. He got up, dusted himself off, and then walked over toward the lip of the plateau, where he stood out in full view for a moment. He waved his rifle, then turned around and walked back toward the mine entrance. He was wearing jeans, a light denim jacket, and, bless him, a black hat.. I waited until he was out of the sight line from the dam and the cabin and almost to the entrance to the mine, and then I fired the shepherds at him.

They went in at a dead run, ears flat, tails out, back legs pumping hard, and hit him simultaneously in the back of the legs and the small of his back. He went down like a trapdoor, with a shepherd tugging hard on each shirtsleeve and in opposite directions, totally immobilizing him. I got up and sprinted across the plateau, trying to minimize my time in the open. When I got to the man I relaxed because he was so obviously petrified I knew he wasn’t going to be a problem. I kicked the rifle away from his reach and stabilized the dogs. Keeping my own rifle on him, I told him to crawl into the mine, where I secured him on the ground with his own belt, socks, and shoelaces, the belt for his hands behind his back, his socks and shoelaces to tie his feet together. Then I knelt down beside him and pushed his face into the dirt.

“Listen to me,” I said, as calmly as I could. “You keep still. No matter what happens outside. If I see you move, I’ll send these dogs back in here to eat your face, and then I’ll cave this sucker in right on top of you, got it?”

He whimpered something, his eyes still squeezed shut. It was unlikely that the shepherds would eat the guy’s face, unless there was a really good sauce. But he didn’t know that. He was heavily bearded like most of them were, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Thin, bony face, bad complexion, snaggled, yellow, meth-rotted teeth. And so scared I could smell urine. I left him ten feet back into the mine itself, which was a square tunnel hewn out of the rock and supported by heavy side beams pushing up corrugated tin sheets on the roof. The tunnel went back and down as far as I could see into the dusty gloom, and I had no inclination to go any farther in. It smelled of damp rot and chalk, and the floor had about a two-inch layer of fine dust covering the two rails running down the center.

I took his black hat with me and picked up his rifle on my way out. I put the hat on, downed the shepherds at the entrance to watch my prisoner, and went far enough out on the plateau for my hat and rifle to show if the guys down on the dam took a look, which they did about two minutes later. I could see the binocs flashing up my way, so I tipped my head forward, hopefully showing the hat and rifle the guy down there was expecting to see.

But my original problem was still there-how to warn the good guys inside that Mingo was having them surrounded. Then I had an idea: send a messenger.

I scuttled back to the entrance of the mine. The dogs were sitting on either side of the black hat, who was being very still. I walked over to him and cut off his bindings. He opened his eyes. Then, standing behind the guy, I flashed my teeth at Frack, who flashed back and growled. It was just a thing he’d learned to do, but it was really impressive. Frick just watched. I did it again and the guy in the dirt whimpered. I told him to stand up, carefully, with no sudden moves. He got to his feet and it looked like it was taking everything he had not to bolt- into the mine.

“I have a job for you,” I told him. “Mingo’s down there at Sheriff Hayes’s cabin, right?”

He nodded, while trying not to stare at Frack. When he did look at Frack, I flashed my teeth again over his shoulder and got a truly gratifying response from the big black dog.

“I want you to go down there and tell Mingo that federal cops are on this hill. I’m not the only guy out here watching you people, understand?”

He nodded again, still keeping an eye on Frack, who was waiting to play some more. “Yessir,” he croaked.

“You go down there and tell him to get his people off this land or there’s going to be a war, and the guys with the machine guns are going to win.”

He blinked. “Machine guns?”

“I’ve got one right out there under that trestle, so when you walk down this hill, you remember that.”

“Yessir.”

“I can put a hundred rounds through your spine in ten seconds,” I boasted, and he nodded. He glanced down at his feet.

“Shoes?” he asked, and I told him no. Based on the looks of him, I figured he’d been barefoot for a good part of his life already. I gave him his hat back, but not his rifle, and he limped his way across the slag debris and the gravel and then started down the hill. I resumed my position under the trestle, and he did not look back. The dogs watched him go. Frick seemed a little disappointed. Maybe she would have eaten his face. Perhaps it was all the food bits in his beard.

I surveyed the dam with the spotting scope and finally saw the binocular man again, then saw him start when he caught sight of his barefoot buddy making his way down the hill from the mine. I wondered if they’d shoot him. If they did, that would be a warning, but I preferred getting my little message in front of Mingo if that was possible. He might or might not believe it, but his posse would.

My messenger made it up onto the porch, took his hat in hand, and disappeared around to the front door. A few minutes later he came out with Mingo, who went down the front steps at a quick walk, his erstwhile shooter hobbling behind him. Neither Carrie nor the Big brothers were visible, but I could just see Sheriff Hayes standing on the edge of the front porch, watching Mingo go. I swung the big scope around to follow Mingo, who had reached his car. He said something to the barefoot man, who nodded repeatedly, and then Mingo got in. I could see him pick up his radio mike. He said something, dropped the mike, and drove off. The barefoot man walked after the cruiser, hopping from one sore foot to the other on the stony surface.

I could just imagine what Mingo had said to him. I swung back to the far edge of the dam and pretty soon saw three, not two, men slink off into the underbrush. Then I heard a screen door slam and looked back at the cabin. Carrie was standing out on the back porch, looking up at the mine. I waved from my hide under the trestle. She waved back and then indicated I should come down there. I flashed my hand, five fingers extended, at her twice, indicating ten minutes. She understood and went back into the house. I saw Bigger John out on the side porch now. He had his gun out and was watching the area in front of the house while sucking up a quick cancer stick.

I waited for the full ten minutes. If those guys were leaving and not just repositioning, I wanted time for them to get gone so they couldn’t see that the “army” of revenuers consisted of one guy and his dogs. I spent the entire time searching with the scope for any signs of humans in the underbrush who could achieve a line of fire when I came down off this hill. I didn’t find anybody, which of course wasn’t the same as saying there wasn’t anyone up there in all those tall weeds. Then I finally went down there.

They were all gathered on the side porch by the time I walked up. I put the dogs on a long down in the yard along the side of the house and the scope on the steps leading up to the porch. Then I walked up onto the porch, my rifle in my left hand. I was focused on Hayes, whose face was haggard. I walked right past Carrie and the brothers and stopped in front of the sheriff.

He looked like he half-expected me to hit him. Perceptive man.

“You part of a conspiracy to sell little girls to offshore perverts?” I asked, not realizing I’d cocked my right fist.

He raised his own hands in a defensive gesture and said he could explain.

“Cam,” Carrie said from behind me. “Let’s take it inside. Those people may still be out there.”

“Answer me,” I said to Hayes. “I saw you and Mingo at the hospital the other night, where he was delivering what looked like an unconscious child.”

He looked down at the floorboards and took a deep breath. “It was Mingo’s scheme,” he said finally. “I was paid to look the other way.”

“What were you two arguing about?”

“Mingo had always said that these were kids who needed an abortion. Teenagers who’d been abused by their father or their uncles. Said he didn’t need no more incest monsters in Robbins County. There was never any talk of selling them. The abortions were illegal, ‘cause they were underage. But they were necessary. We’ve got mongoloids and worse up in those hills. He paid me to keep the county hospital’s involvement quiet.”

“What was the argument about?”

“You and the DEA guy told me you’d seen Grinny Creigh almost smother a kid. Then you said you’d overheard her talking about selling them. I was asking him what the hell was really going on in there.”

“And the answer was?”

“He laughed at me. Told me I was in it up to my neck anyway, so what’d it matter. Then he told me to get out of there before someone saw us talking.”

“Someone did,” I said. “And I’ve described it all in gory detail to the FBI down in Charlotte. You come up here to eat your gun?”

Carrie said my name again in an indignant tone. Hayes stared at me. His face was not a pretty sight just then.

“Well, get to it, you bastard,” I said. “If you need some help, I’m your man.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Carrie said. “There’s more to it, and we’re wasting time. Right now we have to stop Mingo from killing those kids at Grinny Creigh’s. She has six of them up there, goddammit.”

I continued to glare at Hayes for a moment, and then decided it was time for a deep breath. The look in his eyes made it clear that he was desperately ashamed. We went inside, leaving the two embarrassed deputies to keep watch outside. We sat down in the cabin’s living room. I asked Carrie what Mingo had had to say.

“We never found out,” she said. “He didn’t expect the rest of us to be here, so there was some hemming and hawing, then he got mad, started making threats, and then that barefoot man banged on the door. We heard him say there were cops with machine guns on the hill and Mingo had to pull his people out of here. That was the first we knew that his people were out there.”

“I think he came here to kill me,” Hayes said from the couch. He seemed to have shrunk in the past few minutes, and he looked a hundred years old. “Those other people were just for insurance.”

Before either of us could reply to that, I heard the shepherds start barking, and then Big Luke stuck his head through the front doorway. “Car comin’ in fast,” he reported.

We went to the front door and looked out. A police car was coming up the lower driveway, coming so fast that the driver could barely maintain control. It was a cruiser, and it looked a lot like the one Mingo had been driving.

“Inside,” I yelled. “Everybody inside!” Then I called in the dogs and grabbed up my scope.

We backed away from the doorway and the two deputies piled in, followed by the two shepherds. We slammed the door and took up position by the front windows, weapons ready. Hayes went to the fireplace, took down a large double-barreled shotgun from a gun rack, and began feeding it shells.

The cruiser blasted up past the edge of the dam and then headed straight for the cabin. We could only see one person inside the car, and, at the last moment, he swerved to the right and drove the vehicle up onto the lawn in front of the cabin, tearing huge ruts into the soft ground as he got it stopped.

It was definitely Mingo, and the expression on his red face was murderous. Before we had a chance to react, he reached to his right and produced a Bush-master M4. He stuck it out the window and opened fire on the cabin. We all spent the next few seconds getting flat while a hail of gunfire blew out all the windows and reduced the front door to splinters. I yelled at the deputies to get to the back of the cabin, and they made a high-speed crawl through all the racket and flying debris back into the kitchen area and out the door. The shepherds fled into the kitchen with them.

Carrie, like me, was down on the floor taking shelter behind the largest base logs while bullets blew hunks of chinking into white dust all over the room. I glanced behind me and saw Hayes, also on the floor, starting to inch toward the front wall with the shotgun cradled in his arms like an infantryman. An instant later, the shooting stopped, and I chanced a look through one of the bullet holes in the chinking. Mingo was reloading a new magazine, so I took the opportunity to poke the rifle into the hole and take a single snap-shot at the cruiser. I think I hit a nearby tree, but Mingo wasn’t impressed. He brought the Bushmaster back up and we all went back to imitating pancakes. The noise was incredible, and the chinking was filling the room with a choking cloud of white dust. Framed pictures were being blasted off the back walls, and even the dining room chandelier was blown off its ceiling hook. Whatever else happened, this place wouldn’t be waterproof for years.

By the time Mingo got through his second magazine, Hayes had reached one of the front windows. He didn’t hesitate but rose up into a sitting position and let go both barrels at the cop car outside. He rolled away from the window, got two more shells into the gun, and rolled to the remains of the front door, where he stuck the gun through the thoroughly splintered wood and fired two more loads in the general direction of the cruiser. Then he flattened himself behind a two-foot-thick base log just as Mingo opened up again.

I was beginning to wonder just how much damn ammo that crazy bastard had out there, but then realized he’d shifted his aim to that big stone fireplace, because now there were rounds ricocheting all over the interior and there was truly no place to hide. All we could do was to stay down and hope. Then I heard three booming gunshots from the side porch, and the hail of automatic weapons fire stopped suddenly. One of the Big brothers had apparently crawled around the porch and momentarily put Mingo’s head down.

The silence was a pleasant respite. Carrie’s face was dead white, with fear, I thought, until I realized it was chinking plaster. She had her nine in her right hand, but no way to shoot without exposing herself to that Bushmaster. Hayes, on the other hand, was crawling through the crunchy white dust on the floor toward the front door again. Then we heard Mingo yelling something from out front. I was still a little bit deaf from all the shooting, but he was using the loudspeaker from the cruiser.

“Hayes, you weak bastard, this is between you’n me. Tell them other assholes to stay down and get your yella ass out here.”

Hayes kept crawling toward the front door. He held two ready shells in the splayed fingers of his left hand, and for the first time I saw that his head was bleeding. The blood running down his white-dusted face made him look like he’d put on war paint.

Mingo kept yelling more taunts. I tried to figure out where exactly he was. My best guess was that he was down behind his cruiser. Hayes kept crawling.

“What’re you doing?” I asked him.

“You people get out the back,” he said quietly. “I’ll take care of this problem. Keep your eyes peeled-he never goes anywhere alone.”

“You can’t go up against a Bushmaster,” I said, but even as I said it, I knew he could and would. The look on his face said as much, and I realized then that what he had in mind was unofficially called suicide by cop. That worked for me, considering what he’d been party to. I signaled Carrie to start backing away from the front-wall logs toward the kitchen and the back door.

“If you’ve got another shotgun in here, I can cover you,” I offered.

He shook his head. “This is my problem. You go get those kids away from that witch.”

Mingo was shouting some more trash out front, and I was beginning to wonder if he had any more ammo for that M4. Just then one of the Big brothers popped off three more rounds at the cruiser from the other side porch and received an impressive blast of automatic fire in response. It sounded like the rounds were chain-sawing the corner-overlap logs out on the front porch. And the answer is-why, yes, he does. The world’s supply, apparently.

Hayes had stopped crawling across the floor and was pulling the edges of the front-hall rug back, revealing a trapdoor in the floor. He looked over at me and jerked his head toward the kitchen. Carrie was already halfway there, so I cradled my rifle and started moving back. I had to leave the spotting scope. Hayes was disappearing down into the crawl space below the cabin as Carrie and I made it to the back door. Mingo fired another burst at the front of the cabin and yelled more obscenities. By the time the rounds reached the kitchen area they were flying high, but the air was still pretty thick with bullets. They’re not big bullets-. 223 Remington-but they are propelled by a powder cartridge that’s about a half mile long, so when they come, they come seriously energized.

Carrie and the shepherds slipped out the back door and down the back steps, putting as much of the stone foundation between them and the nutcase out front as they could. I went sideways along the back porch until I could signal the deputies, who backed away from their positions at the porch corners. I was really glad they were along for this little adventure, both as witnesses and shooters. We gathered at the back steps, staying down at the level of the foundation, trying to keep the stone steps between us and the hillside where Mingo had put shooters earlier.

Using the rifle scope, I began to scan the tree lines behind us, looking for his backup, although I didn’t think he’d brought any this time. His little posse of assassins might still be waiting down on the dirt road for the gunfight at the OK Corral to be done with. We could hear Mingo still ranting away on the loudspeaker, but nothing from Sheriff Hayes. I told the Bigs that Hayes had gone down a hole into the crawl space.

“What’s the plan, Stan?” Carrie asked me, taking her own nervous look around at the surrounding hills. This cabin had not exactly been situated in a defensive position. The woods came down to within a hundred feet of the steps, directly behind us, and that was the obvious way out.

“I’ve got the rifle,” I said. “You guys and the dogs make a run for that tree line. If there’s a black hat up there, I’ll deal with him. Keep the cabin between you and Mingo’s sight line.”

Then we heard the cruiser’s engine crank up. It sounded like he was backing up. “Change one,” I said, and the four of us bolted around to the left side of the cabin as we heard Mingo put it in drive and gun the cruiser around to the right side of the cabin, where he proceeded to let go a blast of enfilading automatic weapons fire through the side windows this time. We gathered at the left front corner of the cabin, still trying to keep as much of the structure as possible between us and that Bushmaster. Then he gunned the cruiser again, swerving it around to the back of the cabin.

“The dam!” I yelled, and we took off on a dead run down the front yard, tripping over all the tire ruts in the lawn, until we made it to the dam and slid down the grassy face. We could hear Mingo yelling over that damned loudspeaker and then firing some more into the house as he drove around it like an enraged Apache. I felt naked out there on that exposed face of the dam, especially if Mingo’s guys were down there in the trees below us, but at the moment there was nowhere else to hide. As long as Mingo stayed focused on the cabin, we’d be relatively safe. I glanced at the deputies, who were calmly reloading their clips. Big Luke saw me looking and grinned; the big galoot was enjoying all this. Then we finally heard Hayes yell something from inside the cabin. I crawled back up to the top edge of the embankment.

Mingo had somehow managed to turn the cruiser around so that it was facing the backyard on what from our current position was the right side of the cabin. He had the Bushmaster stuck out the window, and I could hear him slam another magazine into it as I watched. He yelled back at Hayes, and then I saw, down low on the ground and behind some shrubbery, the double barrels of Hayes’s shotgun sliding slowly out a hole in the foundation, pointing up at about a ten-degree angle. Mingo couldn’t see it because he was busy leaning out the driver’s window and firing another burst into the side windows of the cabin. Those black barrels kept emerging, now pushing through the bush itself. Mingo stopped firing and was reaching for the speaker mike when the shotgun let go.

At a range of no more than twenty feet, I could see the loads punch two big, dimpled, dinner-plate-sized holes in the door. Mingo was knocked sideways back into the car, taking the carbine with him. The shotgun barrels tipped momentarily, leveled, and then Hayes fired again, lower this time, punching two more lethal-looking, multiple-holed indentations into the door panel. I actually saw upholstery explode inside the cruiser. Something dark sprayed all over the inside of the windshield.

The other three had poked their heads up when they heard the shotgun. Hayes pulled the shotgun back into the crawl space, and the sudden silence made me nervous. We could smell the gunsmoke drifting down across the front lawn. Mingo still had that Bushmaster in there, even if he was probably wounded. I became aware that we were clustered very close together. The last light of evening was dwindling fast, but our little band made much too good a target.

“Spread out,” I said. “In fact, why don’t you guys move across the dam and into those trees in case he’s got a rifleman down there behind us.” The deputies moved immediately, probably glad to head for some cover.

Carrie stayed put. “What are you going to do?” she asked. Damned woman just couldn’t take orders.

“I’m going to keep this rifle on the car until Hayes shows himself,” I said. “Mingo may be playing possum.”

“Why?” she asked. “A little while ago you were ready to help Hayes kill himself.”

“Still am,” I said, watching carefully for any signs of Hayes. It was getting hard to see anything up by the cabin. “But I think he wants to take his ex-partner there with him, and I’m in favor of that.”

“Cam,” she began, but I cut her off.

“Hey, Carrie: What we need now is not to get surprised from behind-that’s where Mingo’s people went, remember? Let me work this situation, and you make sure no one is setting up on us.”

“You shoot either one of those duly elected sheriffs, it’ll be a whole new ball game,” she warned.

“I know that,” I said. “Now, please-get back under cover. Look: Hayes is coming out.”

She peeped over the rim of the dam and saw the sheriff crouching by the corner nearest the back porch, which put him in front of the cruiser. I couldn’t see anyone in the cruiser, and obviously neither could he. He carried the shotgun low and pointed at the car. Carrie slid back down to make sure she was out of the possible line of fire and duckwalked across the face of the dam to join the deputies. I moved left to the swale where the dam intersected the front lawn and then set myself down into the prone position. I made sure my rifle barrel went up into the air before settling in on the cruiser, so that Hayes would know I was out there. He stopped for a moment when I made the move, but then continued his creep toward Mingo’s cruiser. There was a long cone of shadow in front of the cabin.

I scanned the vehicle through my rifle scope. It was getting dark fast, but that definitely looked like blood on the windshield. There was no visible sign of Mingo. I assumed he was either down in the front seat or perhaps in the space between the seat and the dashboard.

You’d think I’d learn something about making assumptions, because what occurred next happened in a blur. Somehow Mingo had managed to get into the backseat of the cruiser. The moment Hayes arrived at the driver’s-side window, stood up, and looked in, Mingo rose up in the backseat and shot him three times in the chest with a black handgun that produced quite a muzzle flash. Hayes sat down on the ground with a painful grunt and a stunned expression on his face. Mingo popped the left rear door open and started out to finish the job. I settled my rifle on him, but that was when Hayes let go both barrels of the shotgun through said door and blew Mingo ten feet backward into the grass. Based on the angle of his neck as he lay motionless on the ground, he’d been dead before he landed. All my efforts to keep the fight even had been overtaken in about three seconds of gunfire.

I got up and trotted over to the cruiser, rifle at the ready, pausing only momentarily next to Mingo’s body to make sure he wasn’t acting like far too many snakes I thought I’d killed. When I saw the bloody crater in his lower abdomen, I stopped worrying about M. C. Mingo. Sheriff Hayes, on the other hand, was not dead when I got to him, but he was definitely preparing to depart this vale of tears. I knelt down beside him, trying not to put my knees in all the blood literally pouring out of him. He focused his eyes on me and blinked several times.

“Never knew,” he whispered.

I waited.

“Never knew she was selling them.”

“Yeah, that’s what we figured,” I told him, trying to give him some small comfort now that he was about to die.

“Took the money, though,” he said, and coughed. It made an ugly, wet sound in his throat. I heard Carrie coming up behind me. She stopped at Mingo’s inert form.

“Why?” I asked.

“In-surance ran out before Helen’s cancer did,” he said. “All for nothing. She isn’t going to make it.”

“We’ll tell her this was line of duty,” I said. “She doesn’t need to know the rest.”

He gave me a grateful look in the dim twilight and tried to reply, but then he coughed again and went slack. I stood up slowly. Once the SBI or even the FBI got into it, the whole horrible deal would come out, but maybe there was a way we could shield the widow, especially if she was terminal.

“He’s alive,” Carrie said, and I whirled around, pointing my rifle down at Mingo across the yard.

“No way,” I muttered, but she was kneeling down beside him, her back to me. Then, to my astonishment, she suddenly hauled back and slapped his face as hard as she could.

“Carrie!” I yelled, but she was fixed on Mingo’s pasty face. By the time I got there, he had one eye open and an evil sneer on his face. I stared down at him with disgust, trying not to look at what was uncoiling out of his abdomen.

“He admitted killing my father and taking my sister,” Carrie spat, her fists clenched.

“And now he sells little girls into a lifetime of slavery,” I said. “A true life of accomplishment.”

“Wrong,” Mingo croaked, revealing bloody teeth. “Better.”

“What!” Carrie shouted. But Mingo’s eyes rolled up and this time he was really gone. I pulled her away before she lost it again. There were tears in her eyes, and not for the first time I remembered the old rule about being careful what you go looking for.

“Let’s go,” I said. I wanted to hold her, but she was much too angry for consolation. “His people may come back now that the shooting’s stopped.”

I could see the Bigs standing up now at the other end of the dam. I pointed my finger at Hayes and then made a thumbs-down sign, and did the same thing with Mingo. I collected Hayes’s shotgun and some extra shells from his pocket and then signaled for the deputies to come back to the cabin. I went back inside and retrieved my scope, while Carrie got her coat.

The brothers stood there around Hayes and Mingo for a few minutes, surveying the carnage in the grass. Carrie had walked over to the edge of the pond and was staring at nothing. John had retrieved the Bushmaster. It was a variant I hadn’t seen before, with a flat folding stock and, of course, the modification to make it go full auto. The muzzle brake still looked too hot to touch.

“Reckon we should call this in,” Luke said, indicating the two dead men. John looked over at me.

“If we do,” I said, “Grinny Creigh will get word and she’ll know someone’s coming for her. We’d have no chance of rescuing those kids.”

Carrie walked back, looking hopefully at the lighted panel of her cell phone, but then she put it away with a disgusted sound.

“Cain’t just leave ’em here like this,” Luke said. “Ain’t right. Meat birds’ll be on ’em directly the sun comes up. Them’n the night dogs.”

That was a lovely thought, and he was right: We couldn’t just leave them to the scavengers. I told the brothers that I thought they should make the report, but make it to their supervisors back in Carrigan County. Then they should stay there at Hayes’s place and await the first responders.

“You’re still both technically sworn officers in Carrigan County,” I told them. “This is your duty. Let your bosses call Robbins County, but this way, you’ll be at the scene so none of Mingo’s people can sneak back and screw things up here.”

“They may be out there now, just waiting for us to leave,” Carrie pointed out.

“Okay, so you and I will leave,” I said. “Once the brothers here get on their radio, the black hats will fade away into the woods, assuming they haven’t already done that.”

“Why wouldn’t they come back and check?”

“Because I told that one guy we had a squad of machine guns up here. That’s exactly what they heard.”

“Once someone calls Robbins County, Grinny Creigh’s going to know,” Carrie said. “Live kids are going to become a real liability to the Creighs.”

“Okay, so make sure your people in Marionburg know that, John,” I said. “Ask them to get people over here, secure the scene, and then call Robbins County in-just don’t tell them who’s been shot until they get here. That way we might have a chance to get to the Creighs’ place and do something.”

Bigger John gave me a bemused look. “Like what, exactly?” he asked.

“I have no frigging idea,” I admitted. “But something. We have to do something, and so far, the federal people who’d normally roll on this won’t touch it.”

“You don’t think they’ll come in now that Mingo and Hayes have killed each other?” Carrie asked.

I was getting frustrated. We were standing here talking when we should have been on the move. “Look,” I said. “Mingo’s people are either out there in the woods somewhere or on their way to report back to Nathan that there was a small war out here and nobody came out. Get the local cops into it, explain what we think is happening, and let them pull in the feds. I’m not willing to wait. Grinny Creigh won’t wait, I guarantee it.”

The two deputies looked over at Carrie to see what she thought, and she nodded agreement. “Join up with us as soon as you can turn over the scene,” she said.

“Awright,” John said, and Luke agreed. If John was happy, Luke was happy.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Give us ten minutes to get out to the highway. If you don’t hear any more shooting, you can assume we’re clear of the woods.” There I went again, encouraging people to assume.

It was fully dark by the time we made our way out onto the paved road. We’d gone carefully, lights out, guns poking out of the car in all directions, in case Mingo’s crew had set up an ambush. Carrie rode in the back right seat while I drove; the shepherds were in the way-back. Nothing happened on the way down, so once we got to the paved road I put the hammer down toward Rocky Falls. It was almost seven as we came into the outskirts of town, and I suddenly realized I was starving. Carrie said she was, too, so we pulled over into the town’s version of a fast-food joint and hit the drive-through for greaseburgers all around.

I parked the Suburban in a back corner of the lot where semis would usually park, and we attacked the food. Both shepherds were partial to the No. 2 Combo, which they dispatched with a gusto that gave new meaning to the term “fast food.”

“What did he mean right there at the end?” Carrie asked. “That ‘wrong’ and ‘better’ stuff?”

“Delirium of the dying,” I said. “I don’t think it meant anything.”

There were no other vehicles parked back where we were; the one semi that had been there when we went through the drive-through left. I was wondering whether or not we were being just a mite conspicuous when I saw a Robbins County cruiser pull up into the drive-through lane. There were two deputies riding, but they didn’t seem to be actively looking for anyone. They stopped at the order box, placed their orders, then started around to the pay window. Halfway through the turn, their brake lights came on, followed thirty seconds later by their blue light rack. Hamburgers forgotten, they swerved out of the line, turned left out of the parking lot, and sped off in the direction from which we had come. The girl in the pay window stuck her head out and stared after them.

“Word’s out,” I said.

“Yup,” Carrie said. “Too soon. Now what?”

“Now we go up there.”

“You’re just going to drive into the Creigh compound and, what? Demand they turn over the children?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Tell ’em Mingo’s dead. Tell them the game’s up and that a whole herd of feds are on the way. We don’t want them, just the children. Give them up, we leave, and you sick fucks have maybe an hour’s head start. Like that.”

“And I suppose I get to go up on the front porch?”

“You’re the peace officer,” I said.

“You seem to forget: I resigned, just like you did.”

“Actually, I don’t think you did. I think you just told everyone you did. And while we’re at it, I think the Big brothers are SBI, too.”

She cocked her head sideways. “Really.”

“Yeah, really. Brother King told me he had people in Rocky Falls. Baby Greenberg supposedly had a cell on watch when I landed in the pokey, but it was the Big brothers who showed up to spring my butt. And even more miraculously, they switch allegiance from Mingo to Hayes’s office, and get hired in a single day, after you told them to execute that little move. And back at Hayes’s cabin an hour ago? When I was suggesting that they stay there? John didn’t agree until you gave the okay.”

She wasn’t looking me in the eye anymore. “Well,” she said. We saw another cop car go roaring past, lights ablaze, in the same direction the first one had gone.

“Yeah, well-nicely done, actually. It’s not like I’m pissed or anything, and of course I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. But enough’s enough: I’m going up there. If you won’t pitch the deal, then it’ll be harder, but I’m not going to sit here eating some fries while the clock’s ticking on when Grinny Creigh decides to cut her losses. How about it?”

“I have to make a quick call,” she said, pulling out her cell phone and opening the car door.

“Quick’s the operative word,” I said and got out myself to run the dogs for a moment while she conferred with whoever was running her little operation, probably King. I was telling the truth when I told her I wasn’t pissed. I’d sort of figured it out when I thought about how easily the Big brothers were moving through the various jurisdictional lattices. And then up at Hayes’s cabin those boys had looked to her more than once, even when I was the one yelling orders.

I got the dogs back in the car and readied Hayes’ shotgun. I was wishing I’d snatched up the Bushmaster, but I hadn’t seen any more magazines lying around. Carrie got back in the car.

“Okay, let’s do it,” she said. “King said all hell’s breaking loose in the Rob-bins County Sheriff’s Office right now, but he doesn’t think the Creighs have been alerted yet.”

“That something he knows?”

“Nope. Not at all. I think we have to assume the opposite.”

Assume, I thought, and started laughing. I don’t think Carrie appreciated why.