Afraid

directly north of the vehicles.”

That would send them a kilometer in the opposite direction of Wiley’s hidey-hole.

A message scrolled across the screen.

We heard you were dead.

Streng hit the button again.

“Did the bitch tell you that?” He forced himself to giggle like Bernie. “She’ll burn for it.”

He waited. No more messages appeared.

Looking back to the vehicles, the thin guy in the fatigues continued to pace. He didn’t even stop to check his surroundings. Streng still took his time, watching his footing, keeping behind cover. He crossed the last few yards on all fours and finally dropped to his belly when he got within the thirty-foot kill zone.

Streng extended his arms out in front of him, propping the butt of his gun on the ground, steadying his wrist by holding it with his left hand. The grenade launcher bothered him. If the guy wore body armor—it was hard to tell from this distance, but Streng assumed he did—then a hit anywhere other than the head meant he’d be capable of returning fire. Streng didn’t know what kind of rounds were in the launcher, but he’d seen the M79 in action during the war. It could kill by coming within a few yards of the target. Streng didn’t want that thing to go off anywhere near him or the people he was trying to rescue.

Streng watched. The guy paced to the left. Stopped. Turned. Paced to the right. Stopped. Turned. Repeated the process. The sheriff focused on the spot where he turned, cocked the Colt, and waited. When the man once again appeared in his sights, Streng fired at his face.

If the man hadn’t been wearing a helmet Streng would have killed him. But his shot was a few inches too high, and it pinged off the guy’s headgear. Streng fired three more shots as quickly as he could squeeze the trigger, but the Colt had a kick and the guy was sprinting into the woods, so none of them hit. Streng got to his feet and jogged up to Fran and Duncan, who had ducked down behind the Roadmaster.

“Are there keys?” he yelled before getting there. Fran must have recognized his voice, because she opened the driver’s door and checked.

“No!” she called back.

“Look in the truck!”

Streng slowed down, chest burning, knees weak, his side ready to burst. Duncan watched him approach, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

“You okay, son?” Streng wheezed.

Duncan nodded.

“No keys in the truck!” Fran yelled.

“Then we have to move. Follow me.”

Duncan held out his hand and Streng took it, half running/half hobbling back to the tree line, heading for Wiley’s place. Fran met them and took Duncan’s other hand, and they awkwardly maneuvered through the forest, Streng slowing them down so he could look for traps.

“Freeze!”

To the right, next to a big tree. The guy in the fatigues, pointing the grenade launcher at them.

Streng stopped. So did Fran and Duncan.

“Drop the gun,” the guy said.

It took Streng a nanosecond to make his decision.

“Run!” he yelled at Fran, pushing her and the child out of the way. Then he dropped to one knee and fired his two remaining rounds.

The guy fired the grenade launcher at the same time.

The sheriff saw a flash, then felt a punch in the chest at the same time he heard the BOOM. He doubled over, clutching his gut, and before Streng had a chance to wonder how he could still be alive his eyes began to burn.

Sponge grenade, Streng thought. Soaked in pepper spray.

He didn’t breathe in—which wasn’t too hard, because the wind had been knocked out of him—and clenched his eyelids closed while he crawled out of the smoke cloud. The vapors managed to get up his nose anyway, making him choke and then vomit. But he didn’t stop crawling. Blind and oxygen-starved, he moved as fast and as hard as someone half his age.

Streng wasn’t sure how far he’d gotten—perhaps five or ten yards away. He chanced taking a breath. It was like inhaling hellfire. Streng spat up again, his nose running like a faucet, the capsicum making his tongue swell up and restrict his airway.

Keep calm, he told himself. It’s only pain. It will pass.

That’s what he’d told the half-dozen suspects he’d maced in the line of duty, watching as they spat and swore, silently wondering how they could be such babies.

He mentally apologized to all of them. This was awful.

A few more yards, and he breathed again. He was still sucking in fire and brimstone, but it wasn’t as bad.

It will pass. It will pass.

He felt the communicator vibrate in his pocket. They were coming. And they knew where he was. Streng clung to a nearby tree, used it to pull himself up, and realized he no longer held the Colt. No matter. He couldn’t hold off four Special Ops soldiers plus the grenade-launcher guy with just one handgun. His only hope was to make it to Wiley’s.

He tried to look around, but his eyes had swollen to slits and his vision was out of focus. Streng considered calling to Fran but didn’t want her to reveal her position to the enemy. He would have to go it alone.

The sheriff picked the most likely direction to run, then took off at a jog, hands out in front of him so he didn’t run into any trees.

He got four steps before hearing the SNAP!

At first he thought he’d simply caught his leg on something. Then the sickening realization hit him a second before the pain.

A bear trap.

Streng fell to his knee, hands seeking the trap, finding the terrible jaws slicing through the muscles of his calf, anchoring into bone.

Then came agony.

Streng buried his face in the crook of his arm, muffling his scream. This was worse than the pepper spray. Worse than the kidney mauling. His whole body quaked in anguish, and if he still had his Colt he would have put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

He stuck his fingers in the teeth, tried to pull it apart. It gave—an inch, two, three—and then snapped closed again, prompting another horrific scream.

Streng’s mind, insane with pain, struggled to form a lucid thought. He needed something to pry the trap open. Maybe a branch. His hands scoured the ground around him, finding nothing.

The Ka-Bar knife? Streng groped for the fanny pack, finding the Warthog, wedging it into the mechanism and trying to force it open.

No good. The handle was too short. No leverage.

Goddamn you, Wiley.

Streng hated his brother then, hated him more than anyone he’d ever known. He was the cause of this entire mess. And now Streng would be captured, and the pain would get even worse. They’d make him talk. Streng was tough, but Santiago would only have to gently nudge the trap with his foot and Streng would be aching to tell him where Wiley lived. Wiley would die. Fran and Duncan would die. And he would die.

Better if it were only him.

Streng sobbed, coughed, spat, and then raised the knife to his own throat, wishing it was Wiley’s. A bear trap. That son of a bitch. How could he? Especially knowing what their father went through, his leg trapped under that tree …

The sheriff paused. Maybe he didn’t have to die. Maybe he still could get away.