Deadlock (32 page)

“Yes. Hold on a sec.” He extended his arm past the seat back to point. “ Right there, the silver Accord.” Into the phone, he said, “Okay, sorry.”

The operator said, “Umm, this message is marked urgent.”

The cab stopped in front of the Honda. Hutch opened the door and stood. “Yes?”

The operator said, “It says, ‘Do not go to the Honda.'”

“What?”

“‘Do not go to the Honda.'”

Hutch stopped breathing. He looked at his car, snapped his eyes up to the vehicles behind it, then swung around to the ones parked on the other side of the aisle. Movement caught his attention—several rows away, a man rose up from the open driver's door of a tall vehicle, a truck or SUV. He was staring directly at Hutch, something in his hands.

Hutch dropped the phone. He ducked back into the cab and slammed the door.

“Go! Go!” he yelled.

The driver crooked his elbow over the seat back. “What are you—?”

“Drive!”

The Honda exploded.

FIFTY-ONE

The explosion shattered the cab's windows. Fragments of glass flew into the interior. Hutch saw a blinding flash of fire, a glimpse of the Honda's front end starting to rise, as though it were a dragster popping a wheelie. Sheet metal blew apart. The sound was a thousand shotgun blasts in his ears.

The taxi's right side buckled in. Hutch was thrown into the opposite door. A hand of fire and smoke pushed against the taxi, tossing it over. Sky filled a gaping rent the length of the passenger side. Hutch's legs, then hips, then torso tumbled over his head. His face smashed against the glass in the left-hand door. It cracked and shattered, breaking inward as the asphalt road pushed in on it. Hutch continued to tumble. He hit his head on the ceiling, which was now the floor.

Through a side window, narrowed by a pushed-in roof, he saw the pieces of burning metal that had been his Honda—something unidentifiable jutted from the side of an adjacent minivan, which in turn had tipped into the car beside
it
. The engine had landed on the hood of a Corvette. Windows all around had shattered. Fenders and hoods and trunk lids and roofs were blackened, bent, torn away. Heavy smoke billowed up from burning oil. The pungent odor of gasoline and frying seat-foam stung his nostrils.

Liquid poured from his face. Blood, he realized. He spat. His forearms and knees against the ceiling of the upside-down cab, he turned his head, felt pain streak over his shoulder, down his left arm. He moved again. More pain. He ignored it.

The cabbie lay slumped on the other side of the partition. His face was pushed against the Plexiglas. If he had let a child finger-paint his face in reds and browns, it could not have been messier, less defiling. His sightless eyes stared at Hutch in horror and disbelief. The Plexiglas itself was scratched and pocked. The windshield was shattered. Hutch realized that it had imploded into the cab like a million shotgun pellets. The divider had saved his life.

Hutch coughed, spat more blood. He reached out to the cabbie's wrist. He felt no pulse.

A loud, steady moan filled his ears. Slowly it diminished, and he could hear car alarms, screams, crackling fire.

He backed through a window opening. When both knees and hands were on the road—on the glass and detritus that littered the road—he attempted to stand. He pressed his fingers against the mangled door and heard them sizzle on the scalding metal. He pulled them away, staggered back, fell.

Voices, sounding underwater, came at him: “Hutch!” “Daddy!”

Hands grabbed him, at first tentative, then greedily. Macie squeezed his neck. An icicle of agony penetrated his head. He closed his eyes against it. He held his daughter close, basking in her embrace despite the pain it caused. On his other side, Dillon smiled worriedly. The boy's hand gripped Hutch's shoulder. Hutch pulled him close and squeezed.

He remembered the guy standing in the open door and looked. The man was still there, scowling. He slid back into the vehicle. He reappeared and leveled a weapon at Hutch—at them.

“Move,” Hutch said. The word came out as a grasping croak. He pushed Dillon away, swung Macie around and pushed her as well. “Move!” He hit the ground. Bullets thunked into the taxi beside him. Divots of asphalt exploded into the air. He crawled, grabbing and pushing the kids ahead of him.

The shooter was a good forty yards away. Three rows of cars lay between them. It should not take that much to get out of his line of fire.

“Closer to the cars!” he told Dillon and Macie. “Go that way!” He pointed and recognized his XTerra. It was parked nose out on the other side of the aisle from where the Honda had been. It was right where he had directed them to go. “Go to the car,” he said.

The taxi's tire exploded. Big holes appeared in the fender.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

“Dillon! Macie! Hutch!”

Laura ran at them from the front access road. Behind her, a taxi had stopped. The driver stared out the windshield, trying to assess the situation. His eyes widened, and his mouth moved in a silent string of obscenities—Hutch knew it from the expression on his face. The taxi's tires kicked up smoke as the driver reversed.

Laura was still thirty yards away when Hutch gestured wildly with his arms. “Get down! Get down!”

She looked beyond him at the gunman. Her jaw unhinged, and she dropped to the road. A windshield behind her shattered as three bullets struck it. Laura had covered her head with her arms. She raised her face to him. “There's a gun!” she yelled. “In the car, the XTerra!”

Hutch and the kids were close enough to touch the SUV's front bumper. Hutch pushed them. “Go around the next car. Crouch down.

Hide there.”

“But—” Dillon started.

“Do it!” Hutch said. He gave them both a hard look that said,
Don't even think of questioning me!

Macie tripped over Dillon getting past him. Dillon gave Hutch an anguished expression, turned fast enough to catch Macie, and, hunched, they ran together to the other side of the next car.

Hutch darted to the XTerra's passenger door. Knowing it would be locked, of course, he tried the handle. It opened. He blinked, trying to see the objects inside, but a liquid blindfold had slid over his eyes. He rubbed at them, squinted at his fingers. Blood. He must have received a new head wound that hadn't started hurting yet, or he'd reopened the one from when the Mustang had hit the van. He pulled up the collar of his shirt and wiped his eyes.

He saw the weapon. It was the same model the soldiers had used in the attack at the motel.

How did Laura—?

No time for questions
.
Just move.

He pulled the machine gun out of the footwell. He toggled the safety switch in front of the trigger guard with his thumb, revealing a triangle of red paint. Hunkering down, breathing hard, he returned to the front of the XTerra.

He didn't hear gunfire—then
pop-pop-pop!
It seemed as though someone slapped an open hand against the XTerra's hood in time with the sounds.

Hutch turned and pressed his back against the bumper. He squatted down onto his heels. Laura hadn't moved. She lay in the center of the road, her arms over her head, her eyes peering out at him.

“Can you see him, the shooter?” Hutch called in a stage whisper.

She shook her head quickly.

“Then stay there!”

She probably would have been safe crawling to him, but he didn't want to risk her moving into his line of fire. Besides, the gunman seemed more interested in shooting Hutch. She was better off away from him.

He breathed out slowly, concentrating on what he had to do. He wished he were a better aim with a firearm. It'd never been his thing, rifle hunting, target shooting with a pistol. Give him a bow and arrow, point him toward the woods, and he was good to go. Give him a firearm, and whatever he was shooting at better be within arm's reach.

This guy wasn't. Hutch thought about what lay between him and the gunman: the XTerra's row of cars, the row behind it, the next aisle over, and another row of cars.
Then
the guy, standing on some tall vehicle, taking potshots at him. One thing was sure. Outis recruits could outshoot Hutch in their sleep.

But he doesn't know that
, Hutch thought.
At least right now he doesn't. If I don't blow it completely—shoot off my own hand or something—maybe I can keep him from moving in until help comes.

But the gunman wasn't going to be frightened away by Hutch brandishing a weapon he didn't have the skill to aim. Hutch knew from somewhere—maybe a History Channel documentary—that most battles were won through attrition: the combatants simply kept fighting until the other side had too few able-bodied men to continue. If that was the strategy taught at Outis, then that guy wasn't going away until more men and firepower became aligned against him or they zipped him up in a body bag.

So bring in the cops—he'd worry about the repercussions later. Just don't let Macie, Laura, and Dillon get hurt.

God, don't let them get hurt.

FIFTY-TWO

Hutch waited until the man shot at the hood again—his bullets striking the metal and the asphalt beyond. As soon as Hutch detected a pause, he rose and spun. The man was ready. He fired. The bullets broke the driver's-side glass, punched holes in the windshield. Glass sprayed Hutch's face. He started to drop down, changed his mind, and held his ground. He aimed and fired. Fist-sized holes appeared in the windshield in front of the gunman, who ducked. Hutch did the same.

Yeah
, he thought.
Weren't expecting that, were you?

He couldn't believe he'd placed the rounds so close to his target.

Nice.

Maybe he could do this after all.

At the far other end of the aisle, a taxicab rolled slowly toward them. The driver's door opened and a man tumbled out. He rolled away, scrambled to his feet, and began yelling. A shaking fist punctuated his words.

Shadows shifted behind the taxi's windshield, then another man leaned out to grab hold of the door. It was the Outis soldier from the airport. The man yanked the door closed, and the yellow vehicle accelerated. It was heading directly for Laura, who was lying on her stomach in the middle of the aisle. She had lowered her face to the street, wrapping her head with her arms as though they would protect her from machine-gun fire.

“Laura!” Hutch yelled. “Laura!”

She couldn't hear him over the car alarms, screaming people, revved engine, and gunfire—the man Hutch had shot at had recovered and was punishing him with a barrage of bullets. He would never be able to reach her in time—not crawling, and as soon as he moved away from the XTerra's bumper, he'd feel the hot burn of lead.

“Laura!”

He raised the machine gun and pulled the trigger, releasing a three-round burst. Pulled it again, and again. Two of his bullets hit the windshield of the approaching car—in the upper corner on the passenger side. The glass wall of a faraway shelter shattered. Spectators at the end of the aisle began a new volley of screams and yells.

Hutch fired again. The next time he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. The weapon was either jammed or empty.

The taxi kept coming. The driver aligned the wheels with Laura's prone body.

Hutch tried firing again. Nothing.

“Laura!” he yelled.

“Hutch!” Dillon was crouched next to the XTerra. He raised something to him: the bow. Hutch let the machine gun clatter to the ground. He grabbed the bow, then the arrow Dillon held out in his other hand. He had the arrow nocked on the string and ready to shoot in three seconds. It was like slipping into his favorite jeans. One fingertip touched the string above the arrow, two below it. It took him another half second to realize the cab's windows would easily deflect the arrow, especially considering the shot's acute angle.

Laura glanced up. She registered the direction of his aim and craned her head around. The car was a hundred feet from her . . . ninety: less than ten seconds.

He lowered his aim. Instantly, he calculated the speed and trajectory of his arrow in relation to the speed and trajectory of the car—a skill honed on deer, which ran faster than the thirty miles an hour he guessed the car was moving. In one fluid movement, he pulled back to full draw, where the thumb of his string hand grazed his earlobe, and released. The arrow sailed away from him at 240 feet per second. He grimaced when he realized he had miscalculated. It struck the lip of the wheel well in front of the tire he had aimed for. It glanced off the metal and penetrated the tire, which exploded as surely as it would have had Hutch hit it with a bullet. The car pulled sharply to the left.

It ran over Laura.

The taxi's front-end mercifully blocked Hutch's view.

His stomach cramped. His mouth dropped open.

The taxi continued its sharp leftward incline and crashed into a parked car before reaching Hutch's position.

Hutch leaned and pushed Dillon back between the cars. He yanked the quiver of arrows the boy gripped in both hands.

Laura stood up. She had not been run over; Hutch's perspective had only made it appear so. Her knees wobbled, and she swayed. She looked dazed, but she slapped the hair back from her face and smiled.

Way to go,
he thought, then immediately remembered why she'd been lying there in the first place and yelled, “Get down!”

A bullet struck her right shoulder. Laura's face twisted in pain and shock. Her feet seemed to take flight, sailing out in front of her. She landed hard on her back. She grabbed her shoulder and rolled toward the cars on the opposite side of the aisle.

But she was
moving
. She was all right.

Relief washed over Hutch like ice water on a parched throat.

She kept rolling until she was mostly under a bumper. Then she turned like a watch hand, getting her legs under the car farther. She began wiggling backward into the shadow of the undercarriage.