Page 140 of South of Nowhere

“Internal mag,” Colter shouted.

She nodded.

Bear had a hunting rifle, which unlike an assault weapon had a fixed magazine that held only three rounds. After every third shot he would have to reload, which took maybe four or five seconds.

Colter said, “Count the rounds. We’ve got to get out of here. No cover.”

“I’ll draw him out,” Starr said. She rose fast, fired a few shots at the lead SUV, and when she dropped, they counted three rounds from Bear. The boom of the last shot had not subsided when she and Colter started sprinting to the command post.

Just as Bear reloaded and let go with another three, they tumbled to the ground, where Tolifson, Dorion and Fiona lay behind a berm of earth in front of the tents. McGuire was behind the department pickup.

“A standoff,” Colter said, still shouting.

Starr said, “There’s one way they can change that.”

Colter Shaw had figured this out too. “They’re going to blow the levee, so we’ll have to break cover and try to save the remainers.”

Colter glanced quickly into the valley and saw Mary Dove crouching with Mrs. Petaluma behind an open doorway. No more than fifty yards from the black bulwark of earth that was soon to unleash a tide in their direction.

—

Rotund bombsmith Hire Denton was sitting in his Jeep, a quarter mile from the levee, listening absently to the gunshots. Wasn’t his problem.

He was on a website, shopping for more Bob, good old-time black powder.

He was squinting at the price—a little high—for something you could buy in gun stores for reloading ammo, but your average clerk at, say, Frederick’s Gun Shop, might not be inclined to step into the back and wheel out a hundred-pound keg.

He decided to go ahead and make the purchase, of which the payment was the easy part. Delivery of even low explosives like Bob took some logistics. He was about to send the info when—

Ding…

Ah, it was theGomessage from the boss.

He’d been wondering if he’d ever hear, and if his efforts in the cold water to plant Charlie at the Never Summer would have been a waste of time—though he would of course be paid whether Charlie met his fate or not.

Here was the answer.

And so it was goodbye, my friend, enjoy your last few seconds on earth.

Charlie, an exceedinglyhighexplosive, was meager on smoke but big on destruction.

He took his other phone, the one he would use to call the two numbers. First, the arming circuit, then the detonation circuit. The phone was passcode protected, and ten digits—so it could virtually never be guessed.

Hire Denton, however, had no trouble remembering it. The string of digits was the phone number of his local Wendy’s, where he placed an order at least three times a week, the 20 Nuggs Combo being his favorite.

62.

The gunshots had started three or four minutes ago.

Mary Dove Shaw instinctively knew they were at first coming from small arms, being traded back and forth over her head and that of Mrs. Petaluma.

Some rounds were from the hill to her left, where the command post, her daughter and younger son were. And some from the right where she could just see the tops of a few black SUVs. Then longer rolling booms from a hunting rifle, the shooter on the SUV side, hidden somewhere in the trees.

“Stay low,” she said to Mrs. Petaluma, who nodded. Her eyes revealed not panic but concern. A bit of anger too. She was the sort of woman, Mary Dove assessed, who did not like her life to stray far from where she had tucked it into a high-fence corral.

They crouched behind the open driver’s side door of Mary Dove’s pickup.

A lull in the gunfire.

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