The two chosen men nodded, and Lucas said, “Okay. Another thing you guys have to do. One of you should get back in the trees and run along the road for a half mile or so, to stop traffic coming in.” He turned to Laurent: “You ought to send somebody in uniform down the other way, too. Don’t let anyone in who isn’t a cop.”
Laurent nodded. “We need to break into compass-point groups. We’ll have Frisell on the north, but we need more groups in the woods, where they’ve got both cover and concealment, on the east, west, and south sides.”
Lucas said, “Then you and I, and a couple of other guys, can try to sneak up to the inn. I think I see a way in. We’ll need guys with vests: So who’ll that be? Who has vests?”
They broke into the compass-point groups, including Frisell’s. As they got ready to move out, Lucas said, “You all know how dangerous this is—some of us will be scrambling around in town. Don’t shoot anyone if you’re not sure of your target. There’ll be townspeople and reserve deputies without uniforms, and we don’t want to be killing each other. Be careful. Be careful.”
The compass-point groups moved out, leaving behind the men who’d go into the town with Lucas and Frisell. They started by calling the woman who was holed up in the gas station, who said she’d call a guy in the bar and have him call Lucas directly. “I’d just give you his number, but he might not believe you. But I’ll vouch for you, because you’re with Walt, and I know Walt.”
Walt was the guy who first called her.
Lucas hung up, stared at his phone, and a minute later, it lit up with an incoming call. “This is Ralph Setzer.”
“What’s your situation there?” Lucas asked.
“We got six people here, two shotguns, a rifle, and two handguns,” Setzer said. “We’ve barricaded the doors. We got plenty of beer and brats, so we can hold out indefinitely.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lucas said. “Save one of the brats for me.”
“We’ll do that.”
Behind him, Laurent laughed and said, “Gotta love those fuckin’ hosers.”
“We’re gonna try to come in through the side,” Lucas said. “If you’ll push one of those windows open, we think we can get there without getting shot at.”
“When are you going to do this?”
“Right away,” Lucas said.
“C’mon ahead. We’ll get the windows open for you. We’ll put a chair out there, the windows are a little high.”
“Next few minutes,” Lucas said. His neck was bothering him: Peters had used tweezers to take a few pieces of automotive glass out of his skin, and said he didn’t think that any had really penetrated. He’d covered the small cuts with Polysporin and a gauze pad, but now the wound was beginning to itch.
Nothing to do now but ignore it.
Lucas said to his group, “We can dodge along behind houses until we get a line that’ll let us go directly to the bar. The big problem, of course, would be if one of Pilate’s people is inside one of the houses. So we go in groups. Guys in uniforms will lead, so the locals don’t freak out and shoot us—Rome will lead, then Peters, and I’ll follow. The rest of you guys will stay back one house, under cover. Three of you should watch the windows we’re exposed to. You see movement at the windows, fire a shot high over the window, through the wall. If they break out a window and you see a gun, then take them out. We don’t want to kill anybody, but we don’t want them killing us, either. Everybody got it?”
“Just like hopscotch, going in,” Laurent said.
“The other two guys,” Lucas said, “should be looking backwards. If one of Pilate’s guys that we don’t know about is in a house, and lays low until we go by, he could back-shoot us. So two of you should be looking at windows behind us.”
When they were sure that everyone knew his assignment, Lucas and Laurent led the way out.
? ? ?
FRISELL AND THE THREE MEN with him walked in the woods past Lucas’s SUV and Laurent’s truck, and one of the cops saw the bullet holes in Lucas’s SUV windows and whistled. “That would tend to tighten your testicles,” he said.
“Tightened mine,” Frisell said. “Since I’m the squad leader here, I’ll make the call and say that I’m going down to the bridge and I want Jim to come with me, because we’ve worked together. One of you guys has to go straight across the creek and into the woods, and down the highway, and stop traffic. Any preferences?”
One of the deputies suggested that the other guy should do it, and the other guy shrugged and said, “Okay,” and they left it at that.
Frisell went first, down the creek and under the bridge. Jim Bennett, the post office guy, was next, followed by the third deputy. The fourth guy crossed the creek, climbed the opposite bank, and disappeared into the trees.
They missed Pilate and Kristen by five minutes.
? ? ?
LAURENT, PETERS, AND LUCAS led the way into town, crossing the open spaces in a hurry, huddling behind the houses they’d reached while they looked at the next one, searching for signs of life or guns. They saw no one, and after the last short sprint, climbed on a folding chair and through the window into the bar. The people inside had little information about who was where, but thought that most of the people in town were either in the bar or in the gas station. A few had holed up in their houses, doors locked. Most of them had guns and were willing to use them. The state cop had given them just enough warning to get organized a bit, but not completely synchronized.
“Somebody’s in the blue house, we know that,” the bartender said. He was a meaty guy with a mustard-stained white apron, with a shotgun in his hand and boxing scars under his eyes. “I mean, one of these crazies, or maybe two or three are in there. We know they’re in the hardware store, because they were shooting at us after we shot at one of the crazies—he was out in the open and we know he was one of them. We missed him, though. We’re pretty sure they’re in the inn and we think they’ve got the artists. We don’t think anyone warned the artists.”
“We’ve been shot at from the inn, so we know they’ve got that for sure,” Lucas said.