"They're here," I said. "Beaumont, take Paul and Patty. Get the hell out of here. Paul, when you get safe, call Hawk."
Eight men got out of the cars. Four from each. One of them had a shotgun.
I knelt by the front window and knocked a diamond pane out with the muzzle of the Browning.
Paul looked at me and then at his mother and didn't say a word. He took her arm and dragged her out through the sliders where Beaumont had already gone.
Outside somebody yelled, "Window to the left of the door!"
I thumbed back the hammer and shot the first guy up the walk in the middle of the chest. He went over backwards and fell on his back. The others dashed for cover behind the cars. Carefully I shot out the tires on each car. Two tires per car, so the spare wouldn't help. I'm a good shot, but
I'm not Annie Oakley. It took six rounds. But it also served to pin them down since they didn't know I wasn't shooting at them. At the first gunshot
Pearl sat straight upright, at the second round she bolted out through the still-open sliders. I opened my mouth to yell and closed it. It wouldn't do any good, a gun-shy dog will run no matter what, and she was probably bet ter off in the woods than she was going to be in here pretty soon.
Everything was quiet for the moment. Beaumont must have kept his car stashed
on the rutted track behind the house. I never heard it start up, never saw it leave. For all the outfit outside knew, I was Beaumont, still in the house.
I had six rounds left in the Browning, and no spare clip. I hadn't thoughtStockbridge would require it. There were seven bad guys left. One of them was Gerry Broz. If I shot each of them with one bullet, I would still have
Gerry to strangle. It didn't seem good odds. From behind the Buick there was movement and then my window shattered and the shotgun boomed. The odds weren't getting better. The shotgun fired again and I moved to another window in time to see two bad guys crouched low, running right, and two more doing the same thing in the opposite direction. They were going to close me in from all sides. Anyone would. I smashed another pane out and nailed one of the low-running bad guys with my eighth round, and rolled back against the wall as the glass billowed out of this window with the boom of the shotgun. Hard upon the shotgun was the chatter of some kind of smallbore automatic weapon. I had five rounds left and was badly outgunned.
Pearl had the right idea. I crouched as low as I could and ran for the open patio door, my feet crunching on the scattered shards of window glass. I felt something slap my left leg and then I was through the door and into the woods. I was maybe thirty yards in before the automatic fire stopped behind me. Behind me there was silence again. And then more automatic fire.
The gunfire ceased. All I could hear was the sounds of my own breathing, steady but deep, and the sound I made, moving as quietly as I could through the fall foliage, heading west. My left leg was starting to throb and I could feel the warmth where it wasbleeding. I stopped and peeled off my jacket. I ripped the sleeves off my sweatshirt, put my jacket back on. I folded one sleeve into a pad and tied it in place over my jeans, using the other sleeve. It was a bulky bandage and unsightly, but it seemed to suppress the bleeding.
Behind me I heard a yell that was nearly screaming. I knew it was Gerry.
"Richie, you're a dead man! You hear me? We're coming, you motherfucker. We got a tracker, asshole, and we're right behind you."
And then I didn't hear anything.
CHAPTER 24
As l moved into the woods it got thicker and the going got harder. There was still green on the trees, mixed with yellow, and the combination gave a soft dappled effect to the forest. I didn't feel soft and dappled. And as the afternoon dwindled it got darker. After about a mile I limped up a low swale and settled in behind a rock to take stock. Behind me the woods had thinned into some sort of meadow; maybe a fire, maybe a homestead, long since consumed by the slow fire of decay. Whatever it had been caused by, it made an open space where I could see anyone following me.
I was wearing New Balance running shoes, jeans, a blue sweatshirt, now sleeveless, and a leather jacket. I had five rounds in my gun, my car keys, a wristwatch, and Pearl's leash still stuck in my hip pocket. My leg was very sore and the pain pulsed steadily along it from hip to ankle. There was a Buck knife in my jacket pocket, and two packets of matches wrapped in foil to keep them dry. I always carried the gun, the keys, and the watch. The knife and the matches were for when I went west of the Charles River. The minute I noticed that I had no food, I started getting hungry. The sun was setting. That would be west. I could keep going until dark without getting turned around. I'd have to stop at night. The sun I could figure out. I couldn't read the stars to save my ass, which was not, in this case, a metaphor.
I needed a plan. First I had to figure out if Gerry and his troops really were after me. Or Richie, which is who they thought I was. If they weren't