Dead on Arrival

was horrendous in the quiet night, and Danny was blown backward by the slug striking his chest.

‘Jesus Christ!’ DeMarco screamed. His cousin was lying on his back, not moving. DeMarco didn’t see any blood, but with the night-vision goggles maybe blood wouldn’t be visible. ‘Goddammit, what in the hell did you shoot him for?’ he said.

‘He put his hand in his pocket. He was goin’ for his piece.’

‘He didn’t have a fuckin’ piece!’ DeMarco yelled.

‘Shut the hell up.’

DeMarco looked down at his cousin again. Like DeMarco, Danny had been wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt but DeMarco didn’t know what a deer slug was, much less how much penetrating power one had. But it apparently had enough: Danny still hadn’t moved, and one leg was twisted under him in an unnatural position.

‘Now who the hell are you?’ the man said.

There was no point saying that he and Danny were a couple of guys who’d just gotten lost in the woods, not dressed the way they were. So DeMarco tried another tack.

‘We’re federal agents,’ he said. ‘You just killed a cop. The smartest thing you can do right now is put that shotgun down.’

‘The hell you say.’ He glanced down at Danny. ‘Take the goggles off that guy.’

DeMarco hesitated. Then he knelt and pulled the goggles off Danny’s head. Danny’s eyes were wide open, unblinking, and his head fell limply back to the ground after DeMarco removed the goggles.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ the man said. ‘That’s that New York wop that came to the house today. What were you two jack-offs doing, trying to rip Jubal off?’

‘I’m telling you we’re federal agents,’ DeMarco said. Pointing down at Danny he said, ‘He was undercover.’

‘Bullshit,’ the guy said. ‘Jubal checked him out good.’ Before DeMarco could say anything else, he said, ‘We’re gonna go on up to the big house and have a little talk. You, me, and Jubal.’ He motioned with his rifle. ‘Move.’

‘What about him?’ DeMarco said, gesturing at Danny. ‘Let me check to see if he has a pulse.’

The man laughed. ‘Believe me, slick, he don’t have no pulse. Now let’s go.’

DeMarco looked down at Danny one last time — Jesus, what would he tell Marie? — and started walking, the man falling into place behind him.

They hadn’t walked more than three paces when a shot rang out. DeMarco heard the man behind him grunt and the shotgun fired, the bullet or slug or whatever it was hitting the ground near DeMarco’s right foot. Then another shot was fired, not the shotgun, and DeMarco turned in time to see Pugh’s man fall to the ground.

Danny had shot the guy in the back. Twice.

DeMarco looked over at his cousin. He was sitting up now, holding a short-barreled automatic in his hand. Where the hell had Danny gotten a gun?

DeMarco kicked the shotgun out of the fallen man’s right hand, knelt down, and checked for a pulse in his throat. Pugh’s man groaned. Good. He was still alive.

Danny was now standing next to DeMarco, looking down at the wounded man and at the same time rubbing his chest where the slug had hit his vest.

‘Do you know him?’ DeMarco asked.

‘Yeah,’ Danny said, ‘it’s that Harlan guy who went to the lab with me and Randy.’

He started to ask Danny where he’d gotten the gun when Danny said, ‘Oh-oh!’

‘What?’ DeMarco said, and Danny pointed. There were headlights coming toward them, probably ATVs, and they were coming from the direction of Pugh’s house. The pistol shots Danny had fired hadn’t been that loud, just a couple of pops, but the two shotgun blasts could have been heard back at the house. DeMarco hoped Patsy Hall had heard them as well, but they were closer to Pugh’s house than they were to Patsy.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ DeMarco said. He tossed Danny his night-vision goggles. Danny put them on, and he and DeMarco started running.

As they were running, DeMarco couldn’t help but think of the time that he and Danny, both thirteen, went into a mom-and-pop store in Queens and stole two bottles of beer. Danny had been his best friend back then. The Italian who ran the store, probably a guy as old as DeMarco was now, took off after them. The store owner didn’t stand a chance. DeMarco and his cousin, they just flew down the side-walk that day — and right now DeMarco was wishing he still had that kind of speed.

The second thought he had was: Now I owe the son of a bitch for my life.

DeMarco and Danny reached the point in the barbed-wire fence where they’d entered Pugh’s property, both of them panting from the run through the woods. DeMarco looked behind him; he didn’t see headlights. Maybe Pugh’s men had stopped to deal with the injured man, or maybe they were checking on the lab. When DeMarco had enough breath to talk he said to Hall, ‘We found it. We’ve got the pictures.’

‘Do you have the GPS coordinates for the lab?’ she asked Danny.

‘Oh, shit!’ DeMarco said. He hadn’t even thought about that.

‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘I hit the waypoint as soon as we found the fake-plant door thing.’

‘The fake-plant door thing?’ Hall said, ‘What are you-’

DeMarco explained, concluding with, ‘You’ll understand when you see it.’

Danny handed Hall the GPS and said, ‘The lab’s the fifth waypoint.’

‘Good,’ Hall said, her eyes shining. ‘Goddamn good,’ she said again. ‘Give me the camera. I gotta get a warrant right away.’

DeMarco said, ‘There’s something else you need to-’

‘Not now,’ Hall said, and turned away.

‘Danny shot a guy,’ DeMarco said to Hall’s back. ‘One of Pugh’s men.’

‘What?’ Hall said.

DeMarco started to explain but Hall interrupted him.

‘We’ll worry about this guy you shot later. Right now I need a warrant.’

She walked over to her SUV, opened the rear hatch, and took out a laptop. She placed the laptop on the hood of the car and said, ‘Come on, come on,’ while the computer was starting up. Holding a penlight in her mouth, she connected the camera to the laptop and then started typing. DeMarco guessed she was e-mailing the pictures to somebody and then listened as she started talking into her phone.

‘This is Hall. I just sent you photos of Pugh’s lab and the coordinates where it’s located. Go get me a warrant. Show the judge the photos and tell him I have two witnesses, and that one of the witnesses took the photos and was in the lab. Tell him the witnesses can definitely put the lab on Pugh’s property. And if the judge gives you any shit, any shit at all, wake up Gail Bradley back in D.C.

‘While you’re getting the warrant, I want Jorgenson and three other men in the chopper and I want the chopper over that lab as fast as it can get there. Tell Jorgenson to shine lights down onto the lab but don’t land until I give the word. If Pugh’s guys fire at him, he’s to return fire. Tell him to blast their asses away. I want the rest of the team to meet me at Jubal’s front gate. The team with me will round up Jubal and whoever’s with him in his house. Get moving.’

Jesus, DeMarco thought, she sounded like George Patton.

Hall closed her cell phone and said triumphantly to herself, ‘I’ve got the son of a bitch.’

When Hall walked off to talk to the DEA agent that had accompanied her, DeMarco said to Danny, ‘Where the hell did the gun come from?’

‘I brought it with me from New York. I dis assembled it and packed it in my luggage. I thought I might need one down here, considering what we were doing.’

Goddamn airline security was useless, DeMarco thought. ‘Then why in the hell did you ask Hall for one?’ he said.

‘Would have looked funny if I hadn’t,’ Danny said.

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