house and slipped inside, their minds and bodies in full fighting mode. Well, not fighting exactly; this time, it would really be murder, but it was necessary. Christ. Goddamned women. Setting a gas station on fire as if it were a fucking flare and now they were cowering in a dark hole somewhere inside this house while his men were risking their lives trying to undowhatthose stupid bitches had done. . . .
Don't do that. Rage is a distraction. It slows reaction time and dulls the senses. Let it go.
Colonel Hemmer fought for control, but he kept a small bit of the rage going, too, so what he had to do would be easier. He wasn't a killer, not by nature, and he found no pleasure in it. But he had never shirked in his duty. Not once.
With the door closed behind them, the house was almost blessedly quiet after the din outside. He and Acker moved silently, carefully, like the soldiers they were, from room to room.
Hemmer shivered a little beneath his sweat-soaked shirt, disturbed beyond all reason that the house was so still, so oddly pristine, while all hell was breaking loose just outside. His thoughts galloped down that never- forgotten path of memory where he was lost in the blowing sand, separated from his unit until a smiling American soldier came out of nowhere to lead him to safety. Only it hadn't been a fellow soldier, and although the soldier looked and talked and dressed the part, he hadn't even been an American, not in the way it mattered. One goddamned turncoat in the entire U.S. Army, and he had managed to find Hemmer and lead him right to a cage in the middle of the desert, where things happened that he'd never told a living soul. He'd seen and felt the horrors of extremism in that cage, but that wasn't what had opened his eyes. It was the American who'd led him there.
Hemmer shuddered as that particular memory surfaced, sensing on some primal level that at this moment, the house he was standing in and that smiling American face, they were the same. Good and right on the outside, quivering with evil just beneath.
Something was wrong here, and for the first time in a long time, he was afraid.
He pushed that fear back, reminding himself that a lot of people would think what he was doing was evil. But they hadn't learned the lesson yet: that sometimes pure evil hides beneath apparent goodness, and sometimes it was the other way around. His own government hadn't learned that lesson yet. So dogmatic in their adherence to human rights that the founding fathers had mandated hundreds of years ago that they were afraid to take the single, pathetically simple action that would end the threat instantly. When people were trying to get into your country to destroy it, youclosed the goddamned door. It was so easy, and yet unbelievably, they wouldn't do it. So good Americans-faithful, loyal, patriotic Americans like Hemmer and allhis men-had to do it themselves, because the government had also forgotten another thing that the founding fathers had said about power reverting to the people when their government failed to provide protection: '. . , it is their right, it is their duty . . , to provide new Guards for their future security.'
Hemmer and Acker found a few things that were glaringly out of order in the otherwise tidy kitchen. Acker's flashlight beam picked up brassy bits of shrapnel glinting from odd points all around the room-punched into the plaster and scattered across the counters and floor like tiny, sharp sequins flung at random, and the room was filled with mingled, rank smells. Empty metal skillets left on open flames, old fat smoking and vile, and something else elusive yet oddly familiar. Only the skillets weren't entirely empty. There were a few bits of brass in them as well.
'Oh, shit.' Hemmer closed his eyes the moment he finally identified the strange, underlying odor as the gas that escaped from his grandmother's stove when the pilot light went out. But the pilot lights weren't out on this stove, because the burners were still producing flame.
It came together in a hurry. The women were not in this house- they'd left long ago. And the bullets that went off in here hadn't come from any gun. They'd been fired from two goddamned stupid skillets, and at least one of them had pierced a gas line.
He could almost imagine narrow streams of invisible vapor shooting from tiny cuts in the line, gathering in a dense mass in the confined area of the stove, sinking inexorably toward the burners.
And then, very suddenly, he didn't have to imagine anymore.
THE SOLDIERS fighting the fire in the garage bay had been feeling pretty good about themselves. By the time the Colonel was finished in the house, he would be very pleased to find the fire almost totally under control. And sure, the sky was lightening by the minute, but the coming dawn had brought a breeze with it, and already the huge cloud of black smoke was beginning to dissipate. By full sunrise, it would look like the remnants of a smoky garbage fire.
And then something inside the house had exploded, and the back half of the building seemed to suck in a huge breath and swallow itself. That was the funny part-that the damn thing had seemed to explode inward. And the Colonel and Acker were still in there.
A few of the stunned soldiers called out and made hesitant moves toward the house, but others had their eyes lifted skyward, watching in horror as minor debris from the roof-pieces of flaming shingles, mostly-initially flew away from the blast, over their heads, and into the forest. More ominous yet were the ones floating down toward the lake of gas that had collected on the other side of the pumps and spread onto the road. They'd shoveled dirt between the garage bay and the pumps, soaking up what they thought was the immediate danger, but they hadn't worried about the gas out by the road. Hadn't they been silly.
THE SOUND of the explosion stopped the women in their halting run through the still-dark woods. They were all breathing hard from both panic and exertion, and sweat soaked their clothes and streamed down their faces the instant they stopped moving.
They turned and looked back toward the town, eyes lifting to see the tower of fire they had hoped for. 'Damn,' Grace said softly.Something had exploded, but it hadn't been all that loud, and she could barely see the new fire through the trees. Even the oily cloud from the initial fire was beginning to dissipate. There wasn't a chance in hell that someone miles away would think it was worth traveling to.
'Was that the pumps?' Annie asked, and Grace shook her head.
'The pumps won't blow. Too many safeguards. Something in the garage, maybe. It's probably not going to bring in help, but our chances of getting out are a whole hell of a lot better. Keep your eyes open, though, just in case they left some soldiers out here somewhere.' She turned and started running through the forest again.
So help was not on the way-no fire trucks, no police cars, no gawkers, bless them all, coming to see the show, because the plan hadn't worked. The goddamned fire hadn't been big enough.
It was a bitter pill for Annie. As independent and self-reliant as she was, this was one time when even she wished the cavalry would come riding over the hill-preferably with a martini.
She kept trying to swallow, but she didn't have enough saliva left to soothe the soreness in her throat. They should have stopped for a drink. Yes, indeedy, that's what they should have done. Stopped somewhere between cooking bullets and committing arson to have a glass of iced tea or something.
She wondered how far they had come and, at the angle they'd traveled, how much farther before they'd hit the highway that they'd been on when the car had broken down. My God. She'd almost forgotten the car breaking down. Was that only yesterday?
Dodgeball,Grace thought, twisting and weaving through the spindly trunks of second- and third-generation pines packed closely together, starving for light beneath the canopy of their giant parents. A great many of them were already long dead, canted and leaning against their siblings, propped up in a sorry parody of life simply because there wasn't room to fall down. Kindling waiting for flame.
She misstepped only once and stumbled, but Annie's voice was quick behind her.
'Careful, careful!'
Grace almost smiled at that, even though she kept right on running. Annie was protecting her again. (You've got to eat more. You're not sleeping enough. You didn't wear a hat? What is this? You think pneumonia is a joke?) She hadn't seen that side of Annie since this whole nightmare had started. It was almost as if Four Corners had sucked away part of her identity, and it was only now, as they were finally leaving that place behind, that the old Annie was coming back.
After five minutes of running, even Grace, who was in amazing physical condition, felt a searing pain in her side, and every breath she drew seemed to contain less and less oxygen. They hadn't covered very much ground- the woods had been damn near impassable at first-but she felt like they'd been running for hours.
'Stop .. .' She heard Annie panting breathlessly from a few yards behind her. 'I've . . , got.., to .., stop .., for
