Maybe Masterson had a sexual itinerary, Darrel thought. Why not? It wasn’t a coincidence that federal sharpshooters had the muscular physiques of actors in porn films.
But in truth Darrel knew his motivations were not that complex. He simply wanted to step inside a white flame and burn his life clean of all the impurities that plagued his soul.
He parked in a grove of aspens and walked up the knoll with his binoculars. American Horse’s house was no more than seventy yards away. Through the lenses Darrel watched Masterson knock on the open front door, wait a moment, then disappear around the far side of the house. A moment later Masterson appeared in the backyard, ducking under the washline, removing his shades, dropping them into his shirt pocket. Evidently no one was home and Masterson hadn’t figured that out yet. What an idiot, Darrel thought.
Masterson started up the steps, then paused and looked behind him up the wooded slope, as though he had heard a sound that didn’t belong among the trees. Through the binoculars Darrel saw a flock of wild turkeys burst from the hillside and fly into Johnny American Horse’s backyard.
The wind was blowing from behind Darrel, so that sight and sound did not coordinate. He saw Masterson’s hand go toward his belt, then his head lurch back and both hands rise to his throat, as though he had swallowed a large chicken bone. Red flowers seemed to bloom on his tan windbreaker, and it was then that Darrel heard pop, pop, pop and saw the puffs of smoke inside the trees on the hillside.
He couldn’t believe what he was watching. The shooter was using a semiautomatic of some kind, but the firing was sustained and rapid, the magazine obviously one of large capacity. Blood fountained from Masterson’s mouth. He crumpled against the steps and the railing, still fighting to get his weapon free from its holster, his legs peppered with wounds.
Darrel realized the attrition from last night’s drunk was not over. He had left his handheld radio at the department and the battery in his cell phone was dead.
Darrel got the cut-down twelve gauge from his car trunk and went over the top of the knoll at a run. He could see Masterson on his side, a semiautomatic in his hand, firing blindly into the trees even while he was being hit. That is one macho G-man, he thought. Darrel jumped across a flattened barbed wire fence, his shotgun at port arms, his face breaking with sweat, his lungs aching from the barroom smoke he had inhaled the previous night.
For a moment he thought of cutting into the woods and advancing on the shooter from his flank, but the time loss of working through the tree trunks would probably cost Masterson any chance he had of survival. So he poured it on, his big shoes pounding like elephant’s feet across the sod, his sports coat split at the shoulders. He felt more naked than he had ever been in his life as he waited for the redirected fire that could rip through his viscera or explode his brain pan.
But the firing in the trees stopped, either because Masterson had let off at least a dozen rounds from a nine millimeter or because the sniper was reloading.
Darrel charged into the yard, fired two shells loaded with double-ought bucks into the trees, and heard the pattern spread and knock ineffectively over a large area. He tried to hold the shotgun with one hand and lift Masterson to his feet with the other, but Masterson was hurt too badly to stand. Darrel laid the shotgun on the steps, caught Masterson around the stomach, and worked him up on his shoulder as he would a side of beef.
He could hear Masterson’s breath wheezing from a sucking chest wound and feel his blood draining on Darrel’s arms and back. He started toward the lee of the house, then the shooter fired again, blowing white splinters out of the steps, breaking a window, ricocheting a round off a metal surface inside. Darrel got inside the screened porch, with Masterson draped over him, and pushed a water-stained couch against the plywood that framed the bottom of the enclosure. He huddled behind the couch, his body shielding Masterson’s.
He kicked his foot against the door to the mud room, then kicked it again. But the door was bolted and set solidly in the jamb. He and the agent were trapped, and the shooter could now reposition himself and incrementally cut them apart.
Masterson’s face was spiderwebbed with blood, his eyes dull with shock, a red froth spraying from his chest wound. Darrel found a piece of cellophane in a garbage sack, tore open Masterson’s shirt, and pressed the cellophane against the hole in the agent’s chest. He heard air catch wetly in Masterson’s throat and go into his lungs. “I’m going to get you home, pal. You hang tough,” he said.
But he could not tell if his words registered with Masterson or not.
Darrel’s twelve gauge was still angled butt-down on the steps. The agent’s nine millimeter lay in the dirt, with probably no more than two or three rounds in it. Darrel slipped his own nine millimeter from his clip-on holster and clicked off the butterfly safety. But his handgun brought him little sense of reassurance. He and Masterson were boxed in, with no access to electronic communications. At some point the shooter would flank them, take out Darrel with a head shot, and finish the job on Masterson. What kind of cop had Darrel proved to be? What would Rocky do in these circumstances?
Never accept the hand your enemy deals you, Rocky used to say. Bring it to the bad guys and make them reconsider their point of view. Everybody takes the same dirt nap, Rocky used to say. What’s the big deal? It’s only rock ’n’ roll.
A round from the hillside blew stuffing out of the couch and another shattered the glass knob on the door. Darrel breathed hard through his mouth, oxygenating his blood, then crashed through the screen door, gathering the shotgun up from the steps. He saw a man moving up the slope through the trees and realized he’d caught him changing his position. He fired once and saw leaves and small branches topple through a shaft of sunlight. Then Darrel plunged into the treeline, pumping the spent shell out of the chamber, snugging himself against a ponderosa trunk.
He could hear feet running and peeked quickly around the tree, but he saw nothing except the needle-covered floor of the forest, outcroppings of gray rock, and motes of dust spinning in the columns of sunlight that pierced the canopy.
The ground was spongy with lichen, the air smelling of fern, stone that never saw sunlight, mushrooms, and burned gunpowder. He followed a deer trail that wound laterally along the hillside, through shade and parklike terrain, but he saw no more sign of the shooter. When he retraced his steps, he saw an AR-15 rifle propped against a boulder, the breech locked open on an empty twenty-round magazine. In the distance he could hear a siren pealing down the dirt road.
He walked back down the slope and entered the screened porch. Seth Masterson lay as Darrel had left him, one hand resting on the cellophane patch Darrel had placed on his chest wound. Darrel sat down on the floor, pulling his knees up, the adrenaline gone, his energies drained. Masterson’s face seemed to swim in and out of focus. “You were a brave guy, buddy. It was an honor to meet you,” he said.
He cupped his hand on Seth’s sightless eyes, closing them as he would a doll’s, then hung his head like a man who had not slept in years.