Sudden prey

TWENTY-THREE

Martin nodded. ''Could be.'' ''We could drive north up to Canada, run out of the snow, head west…''

Martin said, ''The Canadians got computers at the border. We'd set them off like a skyrocket.''

LaChaise was silent for a minute: ''Probably couldn't get out of the snow anyway.'' They slowed at a cross street, and a single orange plow truck, its blade raised off the roadway, went banging by: ''Look at that asshole. Doing nothing, probably getting overtime.'' LaChaise's mouth was running: ''You scared?''

Martin seemed to think for a minute. ''No,'' he said.

''Tense?''

''I'm… thinking.''

''Somebody ought to,'' LaChaise joked.

''We gotta be ready to ditch the car,'' he said. ''I don't think we'll get in and out without running into somebody- we can take them if we're fast enough, that won't be a problem, but in maybe two or three minutes, we'll have cops coming in from the outside, ready for us. If we've got them hot on our trail, you go left and I'll go right. But remember, they can track us: try to stay in the street where you can. That'll slow them down…''

''That's just if we have trouble.''

''Yeah.''

LUCAS CROSSED THE MISSISSIPPI ON THE WASHINGTON Avenue bridge, rolled through a couple of turns in Cedar-Riverside and eased the Explorer into the loop. He could make thirty miles an hour, but even in four-wheel drive, the truck's wheels kept breaking loose. The driver's-side windshield wiper, which had never worked right, left a frozen streak just at his eye level. He had the radio going, and the morning show guy on 'CCO said there'd be a foot of snow on the ground when the storm ended.

''We've got school closings all over southwest and eastcentral Minnesota, and the Minneapolis and St. Paul systems will be making a call in the next ten minutes. The governor'll probably shut down state government, since he does it every time somebody sees a snowflake… don't get me started on that, though

…''

A cop car was pulling out of the driveway at the medical center when LaChaise and Martin arrived. They coasted to the curb and sat for two minutes, letting the cop get well clear, then Martin said, ''You're the hurt one. Pull your hat down.''

''I'm good,'' LaChaise said. He was breathing through his mouth again, gulping air. ''My fuckin' heart feels like it's gonna explode.''

Martin took the car into the emergency entrance drive: ''You won't notice when we get inside.''

''This is a fuckin' war, man,'' LaChaise said. ''This is like fuckin' 'Nam.''

''Especially the snow,'' Martin said.

MARTIN STOPPED OUTSIDE THE FIRST OF THE TWO doors and left the car running. If they made it back, it'd be quicker. If they didn't, who cared what happened to the car?

LaChaise got out of the driver's side, and limped toward the door to the lobby.

Martin ran around the front of the car and caught him, slipped an arm around him, and they hobbled to the entrance. The door was open, all right, and just like Martin said, a security guard was looking at them from a phone-booth-sized security room just inside the entrance.

''Little help,'' Martin grunted at the guard. ''He's hurt.''

The guard didn't even hesitate, but went out a small door on the side of the room into a hall and walked up to them and said, ''What's the.. .''

And saw the guns.

''Turn around,'' Martin said quietly, pointing the AR-15 at the guard's chest.

''We don't want to hurt you.''

''Aw, shit.''

''Yeah, shit,'' LaChaise said. ''Turn around.''

The guard wavered and then said, ''Naw. Fuck you.''

''Fuck me?'' Too quickly to see, Martin struck the guard in the face with the butt of the eight-pound rifle, a horizontal stroke that caught the man in the forehead with the force of a small sledge. The guard jerked back into the wall and slid to the floor.

''Go,'' Martin said, but LaChaise was already moving, heading down the hall to the lobby.

Visiting hours didn't start until midmorning, so only seven people turned to look at them when they walked into the lobby: a woman and two children; two young men who sat together; a teenaged girl who curled on a chair, reading aromance novel; and the woman behind the reception desk, who said, ''Great God

Almighty.''

They did it like a bank job: LaChaise faced the people waiting in the lobby chairs, and made his little speech: ''Don't anybody move…''

Martin focused on the woman behind the counter: ''We want the room numbers for

Capslock and Franklin in surgical care. If you don't give them to us quick, we'll kill you.''

''Yes, sir.'' She called up the names on the computers and read off the room numbers. LaChaise could see them over her shoulder.

''Where are those numbers? When we get off the elevators.''

''You turn to your right going down the hall…'' She drew a line on the desk with her index finger. Martin nodded.

''All right, come out of there, and sit with these other people,'' Martin said.

''Keep your hands where I can see them.''

They'd been inside for a little more than a minute.

LaChaise pushed the elevator call button as the woman walked from behind the desk. Martin motioned her toward a chair, and as she went past him, struck her with the gun butt as he had the security guard. The butt hit the woman in the nose, which shattered, and she went down with a choppedoff shriek. The teenaged girl yelped at the same instant, but choked it off, a hand over her mouth. The two young men watched them with flat eyes that said they'd seen guns before.

''Anybody calls the cops, we come down here and waste them,'' LaChaise snarled.

''And you know we will.''

The elevator car arrived and LaChaise and Martin backed inside. As the door closed, they heard people running.

THE TWO MEN RAN FOR THE DOOR WHILE THE WOMAN tried to gather up her kids and start moving. She was screaming, ''Help us, help us…''

The teenaged girl stepped to a wall-mounted fire alarm and pulled the handle down.

Inside the elevator, the alarm went off like a bomb. La-Chaise freaked: ''Holy shit…'' and kicked the doors.

''Hang on, we'll be there in one second,'' Martin said. But it took longer than that, eight or ten seconds, with the alarm screaming the whole time.

DEL WAS BRUSHING HIS TEETH IN A REST ROOM WHEN the alarm went off. He spat once, caught his pistol in his right hand and his radio in the left, ran toward the door with white foam dripping down his chin and said into the radio, ''Lucas?

Lucas?''

Lucas came right back. ''Yeah?''

Del was in the hall, running toward his wife's room. ''Something's happening here, there's some kind of alarm.''

''Be there in one minute,'' Lucas said. ''I'm right straight down on

Washington.''

''Get some more guys coming…''

FRANKLIN WAS ASLEEP WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF, but it shook him awake and he pushed himself up, reached for the bedside table and pulled his pistol out. He could hear people in the hallways, the night nurses, he thought. But the alarm made too much sense to him. They were coming, he thought, just like Davenport said they might, and there weren't any cops between himself and the door. He'd have to do it alone…

And then Del yelled, ''Franklin, I'm in Cheryl's room, you awake?''

And he yelled back, ''Yeah, I'm up now.''

''Can you get to the door?''

''Yeah.''

Franklin pulled the IV from his arm and more or less felloff the bed onto his good side, winced at the impact, and lowcrawled to the doorway. Two nurses were standing in the hall, looking up and down it, and he shouted at them: ''Get out of sight. Get out of sight.''

They saw the gun in his hand, froze for a second, then scurried into a doorway.

Del peeked from the doorway across the hall two doors down. ''Maybe it's not.. .'' he shouted.

But as he said it, LaChaise peeked from his end of the hall. His face was clean-shaven but unmistakable, as was the hard black form of his rifle. Del snapped a shot, missing, and Franklin jerked one off and thought it'd probably gone into the ceiling. Then LaChaise was out of sight for a second, and the next second, the muzzle of the rifle came around the corner and began chattering down the hall, a ferocious up-close pounding followed by a hail of plaster from the walls, the bits and pieces of. 223 slugs zipping past like bees, the sound of shattering glass, and then the quick hollow boom of Del's automatic.

With plaster pouring on him like rain, Franklin peeked down the hall, saw movement and fired three quick shots. Somebody screamed, ''No,'' a yelp, the sound of a man hit. Then the machine gun opened up again, and more plaster rained down, and the door above his head exploded in plastic and chipboard splinters.

Del, across the hallway, heard the man scream ''No,'' and thought that Franklin had hit one of them. Franklin fired three more times and Del popped back out and fired three evenly spaced shots: Franklin was working a revolver, and he'd need time to reload. There was now so much dust in the hallway that Del could barely see the end of it. Then there was movement again and he jerked his head back and the walls came apart again and something slashed at his throat. He touched it, he could feel something sticking out. A bone? A piece of his jawbone? Shocked, he turned and looked at Cheryl, whomhe'd rolled off the bed onto the floor. She was looking at him and began screaming and crawling forward, toward him.

He was hurt, but he didn't feel hurt: he popped out the door and fired another half-dozen shots down the hall, then snapped on an empty chamber.

Franklin came in with two shots: Del groped for another magazine, dropped the empty out of the gun butt, and slapped the next one in and jacked a shell into the chamber. Cheryl was on top of him, trying to hold him, and he was trying to push her away, get back to the door.

Franklin was yelling, and dimly, he heard, ''Hold it, hold it. I think they're gone.''

Del looked down the hall, but saw nothing. Then Cheryl was screaming something he couldn't make out, fear in her eyes, and she grabbed at his throat.

MARTIN WAS HIT. THE SLUG, A LUCKY SHOT, WENT through the inside part of his thigh, just below his testicles, catching mostly skin. There was a big artery there, he knew, and he pulled back and ripped open his pants leg. His leg showed a raw open wound but no heavy pulse of blood. He was bleeding, all right, but wouldn't bleed to death-not in the next minute or so. LaChaise was screaming at him, ''You hit? You hit?'' as he slammed another magazine into the