claiming I killed those people on D-day?”
Jim nodded.
“The guy’s nuts, Jim! I mean, I knew he was a crook, even a murderer. But this?” I wadded the note into a ball and threw it on the table. “He’s crazy!”
The mayor shrugged. “No doubt about that, Lee, but he’s crazy like a fox. And with his tanks and troops, he has enough clout to make ever’body listen to what he wants to say.” He indicated the wad of paper with a wave of his hand. “That note implies that all of the fighting and killing here has been because of you and, if we turn you over to him, he’ll leave us alone.”
I paused and took a deep breath. “So how many are ready to hand me over?”
“Surprisingly few, actually,” Ken interjected. “These aren’t the good ol’ days when people would blindly believe whatever they saw on the idiot box. These are rough times, and actions speak a lot louder than words. Rejas has seen what you’ve done for her, and what Troutman has done. What he did to that messenger was just the icing on the cake.”
That was reassuring, but it raised a question. “I appreciate the sentiment, but if you weren’t arguing about whether or not to turn me over, just what was all the yelling about?”
Jim looked hurt. “You don’t really think we considered turnin’ you over to that lunatic, do you? It’s just that it’s almost noon, and we were tryin’ to decide whether or not to wake you up. You sorta made that a moot point, though.”
“Thanks, Jim, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did decide to trade me. You have more people than me to think about.”
He pursed his lips. “That may be. But this man has already proven that he can’t be trusted. I don’t think he’d stick to his word, even if we did give you up. The hostages he released had some other stories to tell when they got back to us.
“Seems Larry was in a hurry to get the hostages here this morning. He was in such a hurry that he couldn’t be slowed down with a bunch of sick and wounded.”
“Oh God!” I hoped the story wasn’t going where I feared.
But my hope proved to be in vain, as Jim continued, “He killed everyone that couldn’t keep up and forced the rest to march here overnight. According to Eric’s report on his raid, there were over a hundred people left in that hospital. Larry got here this morning with thirty. He didn’t leave anyone behind.”
I slumped back in my chair. Then something occurred to me. I looked over at my wife, tears flowing silently down her cheeks. “Amber?”
I finally understood Debra’s tears. She was in a no-win situation. If I surrendered to Larry, she would lose her husband. If I didn’t, she would lose her mother. No matter what happened, she was about to lose one of the people closest to her within the next few hours.
Of course, my first thought was that I would do the
Then, “
I was at a loss. I truly had no earthly idea on what to do. My jaw kept flapping open, then closed, an ugly parody of a fish aground.
“Shut your mouth, Leeland. Nobody’s turning you over to that lunatic.” Ken’s words brought me back to my present surroundings. “Not even you.” He held my eye to see that I understood. He had obviously followed my thought process and come to the same conclusion. Larry wasn’t trustworthy enough to deal with.
Defeated, I let my fatigue take over and slumped down in my chair. “So what do we do?”
“Well, it’s not as bad as you’d think. We have a plan, of sorts. It’s just that there are some complications keeping us from acting on it. Twenty of them, to be precise.”
Chapter 17
En cite obsesse aux murs hommes amp; femmes.
Ennemis hors le chef prest a soy rendre:
Vent sera fort encore les gendarmes.
Chassez seront par chaux, poussiere, amp; cendre.
In the besieged city men and woman to the walls,
Enemies outside the chief ready to surrender:
The wind will be strongly against the troops,
They will be driven away through lime, dust and ashes.
I squeezed Debra’s hand and emotionally braced myself to leave her and Megan with the rest of the crowd that had come out to the meeting with us.
Megan smiled grimly. “Kick his ass, Dad.” When they’d brought me back injured, her emotions had made the predictable transformation from grief to barely controlled rage.
I hugged her to me and whispered, “If this doesn’t work, it’s up to you to watch out for your mom and Zach.”
“It’ll work.”
I appreciated her confidence, but I hadn’t told her what I had in mind for this meeting.
Jim and I stepped onto the bridge and away from the grim faces of the people that had come with us to meet Larry. The folks of Rejas brandished a variety of weapons, from machine guns taken off of the bodies of Larry’s so-called soldiers to homemade bows and arrows. Each of them had come with whatever they could get their hands on and, though they were outnumbered, outgunned, and quite possibly outmaneuvered, there wasn’t the slightest hint of hesitation. Everyone appeared ready to make their stand.
The bridge stretched over the reservoir for about two hundred yards, and I saw two figures approaching us from the other side. As we walked out to meet them, I examined our opposition. Out front, partly on the bridge itself, sat one of Larry’s tanks. Just behind it, I could see a few hundred troops. Just past the bridge, the road veered sharply to the right and into the thicket, blocking any further observations, although just at the edge of the bend, I spotted the front of a second tank.
“You call this a plan?” I said through the side of my mouth. We were under the supposed protection of a white flag, but my confidence in Larry’s willingness to honor the truce was limited. The whole thing was iffy, at best. Too many things had to go just right.
If Jim had similar thoughts, he kept them well hidden. “Just keep walkin’.”
I recognized the two people approaching as Larry and Han. “Larry’s leg seems to have healed well. There’s no limp at all.”
Jim grunted. “Maybe next time.”
“One can only hope.”
We stopped a few feet away in the middle of the bridge, twenty feet above the murky waters of the reservoir. I was surprised at the hulking leviathan beside Larry. I had forgotten just how huge Han was, or perhaps the rough lifestyle had bulked him up. Whatever the reason, I had to work to keep my jaw from dropping.
“Hello again, Leeland.” Larry smirked. “I see your townspeople have determined to do the sensible thing and turn you over to me.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Doesn’t it frustrate you to find just how little you mean to them? Or that you’ve wasted your time with a group of people that just don’t
