One Hundred Six
IT IS A half-hour trek through the woods, after Jake has parked the van at the bottom of one of the smaller mountains in the Appalachian chain.
We’re on the Cross Rivers side of the mountain, carefully moving on the two-story cabin that, according to Jake Courville, had belonged to Nash Hader’s uncle, up in remote, high ground that even Google Earth has chosen to ignore.
“We thought Hader was leaving town for Florida,” Jake Courville says.
“But then we heard that somebody had seen the Crockett boys going into his house a week or so ago. Everybody in the Crocketts’ orbit had gone dark with their phones about the same time.
But for the hell of it, we started tracking Hader’s phone.
Sammy followed him here a couple of hours ago, trained one of his fancy long-range PTZ cameras on the cabin.
Infrared. They’re all in there.” He shrugs.
“Another house they probably think is safe, the dumb bastards.”
Jake and Sammy and Eli and I have come to the edge of the woods, just before a clearing between us and the lights of the cabin. Michael Gola is somewhere else in the night. Setting himself up for a clear shot, Jake says, if he needs to take one.
“What’s the plan from here?” I ask.
“We give them a chance to give it up,” Jake says. Shrugs again, almost imperceptibly. “And hope against hope that the fuckers refuse.”
“This is how cops wish they could do it,” Eli says, “when they want to take down guys they know did it.”
“No vehicles in sight, or on the way up here,” Jake says. “They must have them down the other side, not that they’re going to need them.”
Jake and the others are carrying AR-15s.
I’ve got my Glock. We’re all wearing night-vision goggles and keeping our voices as low as possible in the night quiet all around us, no wind to speak of tonight, the moon covered by clouds, the air feeling as if there’s a storm on the way.
But the night is still and dark for now.
“If the shooting starts,” Jake says to me, “I want you to hang back, just on account of how much it’ll piss Helene off if we get you shot up.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Say that like you mean it.”
“Well, Jake,” I say, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
He turns to look at me, no way for me to see the expression, training his goggles on me now.
“I was afraid of that,” he says. “Just don’t be stupid.”
“That I can do.”
Then Jake says, “Let’s get ’er done,” and stands and raises the bullhorn he’d brought with him from the van.
Old school, I think.
But then, so is everything tonight upon this mountain.
“We should have just blown the place up like they blew up Helene,” Sammy Chu says.
“I almost want them alive,” Jake says.
He is just able to fit the bullhorn under the goggles, and yells, “Roof and Lynyrd Crockett, this is the police. Your house is surrounded and we need you to come out with your hands where we can see them.”
Behind me I hear Eli say, “Police?”
No response from the house, no sign of anyone in the windows, upstairs or down.
“You’ve got one minute to come out,” Jake says, “before we’re coming in.”
The lights go off inside the house.
Then one of the windows on the second floor opens and we hear somebody shout, “Fuck you all to hell and back!”
The shooting starts then.
The shots come from up there and from the two windows that have just opened on the ground floor, bullets sprayed nonstop into the trees all around us, making us duck back for more cover.
“Assault rifles,” Jake Courville snaps. “Same as us.”
Then: “We have now been warned. Spread out and let’s go light the fuckers up.”
He gives a quick turn to me and says, “Except for you.”
“Got it,” I lie.
As my guys return fire, strafing the cabin, making it sound as if more of us are here to take them down, I get low and run along the tree line to my right.
I’m officially sick of waiting for the game to come to me.