house, and when he heard another machine gun open behind him, lurched out of the ditch, running toward the first truck in the yard. An agent was on the ground six feet from the truck and Virgil hooked him and dragged him behind it, the agent's M-16 bumping along under his arm, hung on a sling.
The truck had fifty bullet holes in it, broken glass spraying all over, two tires gone. The agent was still alive, but his legs were torn to pieces, and he was fading. A brown-and-white dog, that might have been a pit bull, bleeding from its sides and head, scrambled around the truck, pulling with his front legs, back apparently broken, fixing on Virgil. Virgil loved dogs, but he didn't even think about it and yanked his pistol and shot the dog twice.
HEARD SOMEBODY SCREAMING. Another agent, behind the other entry truck, was shouting at him, and Virgil saw a bloody patch in the dust behind him, but the agent was still operating and he pointed out between the trucks and Virgil saw a third agent down and he shouted back, and the other agent screamed, 'You get him, I'll unload on the house, I can't move, I'm hit…'
Virgil shouted, 'Do it,' and the agent rolled and opened up with his M-16, tearing across the windows, and Virgil kicked out from behind the truck's wheel, grabbed the downed agent, and dragged him back, behind a tire. Another dog was coming for them, tongue out, bleeding, picked the agent with the gun, who was reloading, hit him just as he slapped the magazine in. But the dog got a piece of armor, not an arm, and tore at it and the agent found a pistol and put it at the dog's head and fired. The dog lurched and turned and looked at Virgil, a doggy smile on its bloody face, and then it toppled over.
Virgil was behind the truck with two wounded agents, or maybe, he thought, one dead. He looked at the man, caught a breath. No: still alive. He popped open the back door of the truck, lifted the wounded agent inside, and a hail of bullets knocked out the far windows and then went on.
He picked up the second agent, the unconscious one, struggling against the weight, and threw him on top of the first. He threw the first man's weapon on top of them, then crawled into the driver's foot-well, gripped the steering wheel overhead, shifted the truck into reverse, and hit the gas pedal with his hand.
Felt something scratching at him, ignored it, backed straight across the driveway on two and then three rims, heard the volume of fire picking up from the DEA agents to give him cover, never tried to turn, backed entirely across the yard into the field, across the field fifty yards, eighty yards, bumping over rocks and small trees and brush, the truck rocking violently, a hundred yards, and then he hooked into the roadside ditch and hit the brake.
HE CALLED PIRELLI on his cell phone: Pirelli screamed, 'How bad, how bad?'
'Two pretty bad,' Virgil shouted. 'If you got a truck that works, get it down here. You gotta make a run like right now.'
'I'm calling the north team in, they're coming right by…If you got anything you can fire at the house, hose it down, hose it down…'
Virgil got the M-16 in the back of the truck, with two magazines, began popping three-shot bursts at the house as he saw a dust funnel coming down the gravel road from the north, moving fast.
One of the north group was trying to run right past the house. When he got close, Virgil emptied the last of the magazine at the upper windows of the house, where most of the fire seemed to be coming from, dumped the mag, slapped another one in, and as the north truck passed the driveway, hosed the house again.
The north truck slid to a stop in the shelter of the ruined truck. An agent piled out, wild-eyed, and Virgil shouted, 'You know where the hospital is?'
'Yes, yes, we scouted it…'
They carried the two downed agents to the working truck, and the north guy shouted, 'How bad are you hit?'
Virgil looked down at himself: blood, but not his. The agent touched his forehead, and Virgil reached up. More blood, and this time it was his. Didn't feel like much. 'You go on,' Virgil shouted. 'Go on.'
The agent took off, chased by a couple of slugs from the house when he broke from the cover of the wrecked truck.
Virgil dug through the back of the wrecked truck, found a box with six mags in it, stuck one in the rifle, stuck the others in his jacket pockets, darted across the road and into the ditch on the west side. From there, he was able to crawl through the swampy water toward Stryker's Ford.
HE COULD HEAR Stryker still firing from behind the Explorer, and he cleared the truck and Stryker turned toward him and said, 'Need more ammo.'
Virgil tossed him three of the mags he'd gotten from the truck, and Stryker shouted, 'I think Pirelli's hit, he's in the ditch on the other side.'
'I'll get him if you can dust off the house again,' Virgil shouted. 'Let me get my kit.'
Virgil crawled into the truck and got his first-aid kit, then back out, crouched in the ditch, and shouted, 'Anytime…'
Stryker popped up and unloaded a clip in one long burst and Virgil vaulted the narrow road, landing in the ditch on the other side, saw Pirelli with an M-16 shooting one-handed, blood soaking through his left shirtsleeve. Virgil crawled up and shouted, 'How bad?'
'It hurts. I think it broke my shoulder,' Pirelli shouted back. Everybody was shouting. Virgil could hear men screaming all around the house and hundreds of rounds pumping out. The house seemed to be falling apart, but there was still fire incoming.
Virgil pulled a heavy pad and a roll of tape out of his kit, and he and Pirelli eased to the bottom of the ditch, Pirelli on his back. Virgil found a bloody wedge knocked out of Pirelli's shoulder, just below the edge of his body armor. He jammed the pad under Pirelli's shirt and wound two yards of tape around his shoulder, cinching it up tight, shouted, 'No artery, don't see any arterial bleeding,' and Pirelli nodded and said, 'Reload me.'
NOW THE FIRING from the house had stopped, and an agent launched himself out of the east-side ditch to the car where the third wounded agent had been lying, the guy who'd covered Virgil while Virgil dragged the dead man's body. Another burst of fire from the house, but the agent made it, and the DEA shooters pounded the window where the burst had come from.
Virgil, down in the ditch, reloaded Pirelli's M-16 and then heard Stryker scream, 'Watch out, watch out!' and Virgil looked up and saw, at the shed, Franks walking out through the shed door with a long revolver in one hand. He took three steps and shot at the agents behind the truck, no effort to cover himself, and the unwounded agent stumbled back away from the man on the ground, trying for his gun, and then somebody hit Franks with a burst, and Virgil could see his shirt shaking, but Franks stayed on his feet and fired another shot from the pistol and then he went down.
Distracted by the appearance of Franks, Pirelli had half risen to his knees, shouting, and now another burst of gunfire spattered around them and Pirelli went down again, flapping one arm, and Virgil shouted, 'Get down,' but it was too late; Pirelli had been hit again. Virgil crawled down to him, and Pirelli sat up and said, 'Got me,' and dropped back on the ground. Two holes: one in a leg and the other in the right arm. The one in the arm was bleeding hard, but not arterially; the arm was crooked and surely broken.
Virgil ripped open Pirelli's pant leg: that hit was superficial, ripping away skin and a quarter-inch of meat.
'How bad?' Pirelli groaned.
'You're not dead yet,' Virgil said. More tape to put pressure on the wounds; then Virgil said, 'This is gonna hurt. I've gotta move you across the road and up the ditch where we can get you outa here.'
'Do it.'
He braced himself and grabbed Pirelli's armor at the neckline, cocked himself, and shouted at Stryker, who said, 'Ten seconds,' and disappeared, crawling down the ditch. Then Stryker flashed a hand, screamed, 'Go!' and Virgil ran across the road, dragging Pirelli. Stryker popped up, twenty feet from his previous position, and burned another mag.
Pirelli made no sound at all when they landed in the water on the other side. Virgil kept the motion going, dragging him up the ditch, through the muck, to the wrecked DEA truck. Five minutes, a hundred yards, Pirelli didn't make a sound. They reached the truck, went another ten yards, and stopped. Virgil said, gasping for air: 'Somebody'll come and get you.'
'That place is bunkered up. We didn't know it, but it's gotta be bunkered up,' Pirelli said. His face was pale as a cloud, his eyes unfocused with shock, but he was coherent.
'Something,' Virgil said.
