The Simple Truth (45 page)

Rufus had to keep his eyes open to steer, but he scrunched up his face with each shot. His ears were ringing so loudly you could have shouted in his face and he would not have been able to hear you. The heavy branch dropped a couple of inches as its support weakened. Josh kept firing, as sprays of wood chips shot off the oak like steam from an old train engine.

Tremaine saw what he was doing.
“Gun it, gun it.”

Rayfield hit the gas.

Josh never took his eyes off the branch as he kept firing. It gave some more, and finally gravity took over and it cracked and swung down. A layer of bark clung to the tree, then the branch slapped hard against the trunk, broke free completely and started coming down. Josh slammed on the accelerator and took the steering wheel back, passing by the tree as he did so.

“Go, go,”
Tremaine screamed at Rayfield.

However, Rayfield slammed on the brakes as about a thousand pounds of tree branch smashed into the middle of the narrow lane directly in front of them. Tremaine was almost thrown from the vehicle.

“Dammit, why in the hell did you stop?”
Tremaine looked ready to turn his pistol on the man.

Rayfield was breathing very hard.
“If I hadn’t, that damn thing would’ve crushed us. This Jeep doesn’t have a hard top, Vic.”

Josh looked up ahead and then to the right where the path opened up some. He braked hard, swerved to the left, swung the truck around and then headed right and gunned the motor. The truck broke free from the brush, lifted a little off the ground as it went over a shallow gully, and landed in a clearing. Rufus’s head hit the top of the cab’s interior as the truck came back to earth.

“Damn, what’re you doing?”

“Just hold tight.”

Josh slammed on the gas again and Rufus looked up in time to see the small shack ahead of them that his brother had spotted seconds before.

Josh looked back and saw what he expected to see. Nothing. But it wouldn’t take Tremaine and Rayfield long to work the Jeep around the obstacle.

Josh looked past the shack at an angle and could see the road that lay beyond it. He had been right. Where there was a shack in the woods, there usually was a road. He pulled the truck around onto the other side of the old structure. Both brothers’hearts sank. There was a road there, all right. But it had a large steel barricade blocking any passage. And on either side of the barricade were impenetrable woods. Josh looked back. They were trapped. Maybe he could hoof it, but Rufus wasn’t built for speed, and Josh wasn’t leaving his brother behind.

Josh’s eyes narrowed again as he looked at the shack. The Jeep would be on them in another minute or so. Even now he could hear the machine gun efficiently tearing the tree limb apart so the Jeep could shove it aside.

A minute later the Jeep scaled the gully and made its way to the clearing. Rayfield slowed down as they scanned ahead and immediately saw the shack.

“Where’d they go?”
he asked.

Tremaine checked the area with his binoculars and spotted the road as it snaked off through the woods.
“That way,”
he shouted, pointing ahead.

Rayfield hit the gas and the Jeep shot around the corner of the shack. Instantly both men saw that the road was blocked off and Rayfield slammed the Jeep to a stop. With a roar, the truck, which had been hidden on the far side of the shack, exploded forward and hit the vehicle broadside, knocking it over on its side and flinging Rayfield and Tremaine out.

Rayfield landed on top of a pile of rotted stumps, his head at a vicious angle. He lay still.

Tremaine took cover behind the overturned Jeep and opened fire, forcing Josh to back the truck up, his head below the dashboard. Finally the truck engine died, steam pouring out from the hood, the front tires flattened by the machine-gun fire.

Josh came out the driver’s side while Rufus covered him. Josh lunged, dropped to his knees and rolled until he made it to the rear of the truck, and then he peered out. Tremaine hadn’t moved from his position. Josh could see the tip of the machine gun. Tremaine was probably putting in another clip just as Josh was doing, and taking a moment to study the tactical situation.

Josh’s heart was pounding, and he rubbed at his eyes to clear the dirt and sweat away. He had been in many battles on both foreign and American soil, but the last one had been almost thirty years ago. Besides, it didn’t matter: Every time, you were terrified that you were going to die. When somebody was shooting at you, it didn’t exactly make you think more clearly. You reacted more than anything else.

Josh had an edge, though. There were two of them and only one of Tremaine. Josh peered out once more and then sprinted from behind the truck and made it to the edge of the shack.

“Rufus,”
he hollered.
“On the count of three.”

“Start counting,”
Rufus shouted back, tremors of fear in his voice.

Three seconds later Josh opened fire on Tremaine, the bullets pinging off the Jeep’s frame. Rufus hustled to the back of the truck. He was stopped there, however, when Tremaine managed to fire a burst between the truck and the shack. The air smelled of gunfire, and of the sweat of frightened men.

Josh and Rufus looked at each other, and then Josh cracked a smile, sensing the rising panic in his brother.

“Hey, Vic,”
Josh yelled out,
“how ’bout you throw down that damn widowmaker and come on out with your hands up?”

Tremaine responded by blowing a chunk of wood off the shack a little above Josh’s head.

“Okay, okay, Vic, I hear you. Now, you be cool, you hear me, little buddy? Don’t you worry, we’ll bury you and Rayfield. Ain’t gonna leave you for the bears and shit to chew on. That’s bad shit. Animals eating dead bodies. You saw that in Nam, didn’t you, Vic? Or maybe you was running too fast the other way to see that.”
While he was talking, Josh was motioning for Rufus to stay put and then pointing around the shack to show his brother what he was going to do.

Rufus nodded to show he understood. Josh was going to try to flush the man into his brother’s field of vision and let Rufus cut him down. Rufus gripped his gun and slipped in a new clip, grateful that his brother had taken the time to show him how. He was having trouble breathing; his arms felt heavy holding the gun. He was afraid that he would not have the nerve, the killer instinct, much less the skill to shoot the man down, even if Tremaine came at him, firing with that damn machine gun. Rufus had fought many men in prison in order to survive — with his hands only, even though his opponents had always been armed with a shiv or piece of pipe. But a gun was different. A gun could kill from a distance. But if he didn’t shoot, his brother would die. And for once he could not pray to God to help him. He could not speak to his Lord for assistance in killing another.

In a half crouch, Josh made his way across the front of the shack, stopping at intervals to listen intently. Once he dared to raise his head up to one of the windows, in order to perhaps see through it and out the rear window to where the Jeep was, but the angle was wrong and his view was blocked. Josh was totally focused now. The fear was still there, it was very much there, but he had done his best to transform it into adrenaline, to heighten every sense he possessed. He pointed his pistol directly in front of him, knowing full well that if Tremaine had figured what his plan was, his best course of action would be to slip out from behind the Jeep and come around the shack the other way, with the result that he would meet Josh head-on somewhere in the middle. Machine gun against pistol, a hundred rounds to one, meaning Josh would die, and then so would Rufus.

He moved forward another foot. Then he heard the machine gun open fire again and listened as the bullets tore into the pickup truck. He raced forward and rounded the corner. While Tremaine was busy firing at Rufus, Josh could outflank him and silence the sonofabitch once and for all.

This plan vanished when he went around the corner, for Tremaine was standing there, his pistol pointed at Josh’s head. An astonished Josh stopped so abruptly that his feet slid in the gravel and his legs went out from under him. This was fortunate, since the bullet slammed into his shoulder instead of his brain. His momentum carried him forward and his legs clipped Tremaine’s, and they went down hard, both their pistols sailing out of reach.

Tremaine came up first; Josh, holding his bloody shoulder, was slower to rise. Tremaine pulled a knife from his belt. In the background the machine gun stopped firing. Josh yelled out as Tremaine lunged into him and both men hit the wall of the shack, shaking the primitive structure right down to its wooden joints. Josh managed to block Tremaine’s arm with his forearm. His whole side hurt like hell. Whatever piece of ordnance was in him had gone beyond his shoulder to explore other parts of his body. He managed to kick at Tremaine and caught him once in the belly, but the man was up and was on Josh again in an instant. Josh felt the knife cut through his shirt and into his side, and he started to lose consciousness. The pain from this fresh wound was barely felt, so overwhelmed was it by the first. He could hardly make out the image of Tremaine pulling the knife free from his body and rearing his arm back for a final thrust. Probably at his throat, Josh dimly thought, as his brain started to shut down. The throat was quick and always fatal. That’s what he would do, he thought, as the darkness started to close around him.

The knife never made its downward plunge. It stopped at its highest point and moved no closer to Josh Harms. Tremaine kicked and jerked as he was torn off the wounded man. Rufus was directly behind him. One hand gripped the wrist holding the knife. He smashed it against the shack until Tremaine’s finger lock was finally broken and the knife dropped to the ground. Tremaine was solid muscle and superbly trained in hand-to-hand combat. But he was half Rufus’s size. One on one, there were few men who could match Rufus. The big man was like a grizzly bear once he got hold of somebody. And he had a good hold of Vic Tremaine, the man who had made his life a nightmare he’d thought would never end.

As Tremaine tried to wedge a forearm against Rufus’s windpipe, Rufus changed his tactic and lifted Tremaine completely off the ground, slamming his face again and again into the wall until Tremaine was groggy from the impacts, his face bloody. Finally Rufus put Tremaine’s head right through the window, the jagged glass cutting deeply into the man’s face. Then Josh screamed in pain from his wounds, and Rufus looked at him, his grip loosening a bit. Tremaine, sensing this, kicked out Rufus’s knee and whip-sawed an elbow into his kidney, dropping the big man to the ground. Tremaine rolled free, gripped his knife and lunged toward the defenseless man. The bullet hit him smack in the back of the head and dropped him on the spot.

Rufus heaved upward and looked at his brother, wisps of smoke still seeping from the barrel of the 9mm Josh held. Then he put the pistol down and lay back in the dirt. Rufus raced over and knelt next to him.
“Josh! Josh?”

Josh opened his eyes and looked over at Tremaine’s twisted body, both relieved and sickened by what he had done. Even the worst enemy in the world didn’t look so terrifying dead. He looked back at Rufus.
“You done good, little brother. Shit, better’n me.”

“I’d be dead if you hadn’t killed him.”

“Ain’t gonna let him get you. Ain’t gonna let him …”

Rufus ripped open his brother’s shirt and looked at the wounds. The knife had only cut a slice in his side. Probably hadn’t hit anything vital, Rufus concluded, but it was bleeding like a bitch. The bullet, though, was something else. He saw the blood dripping from his brother’s mouth, the rising glaze to his eyes. Rufus could stop the bleeding on the outside, but he could do nothing about what was going on inside. And that’s what could kill him. Rufus took off his shirt and put it over his brother, who was now shivering despite the heat.

“Hold on, Josh.”
Rufus ran over to the Jeep and quickly looked through it. He found the first-aid kit and hustled back over to his brother. Josh’s eyes were now closed and he didn’t seem to be breathing.

Rufus shook him gently.
“Josh, Josh, don’t do it, keep your damn eyes open. Don’t be going to sleep on me. Josh!”

Finally Josh opened his eyes and appeared lucid.
“You got to get outta here, Rufus. All the shooting, people might be coming. You got to go. Now.”

“
We
got to get out of here — that’s right.”

Rufus lifted Josh up a little and checked his back. The bullet hadn’t gone through; it was still in him somewhere. Rufus started cleaning both wounds.

At one point Josh gripped his arm.
“Rufus, get the hell out of here,”
he said again.

“You don’t go, I don’t go, so that’s what we got.”

“You still crazy.”

“Yeah, I’m crazy as hell, let’s leave it at that.”
He finished cleaning and then dressing the wounds and tightly bandaged them. He gently lifted his brother, but the movement sent Josh into a coughing spasm, blood from his mouth pooling down his shirt. Rufus carried him over to the truck and laid him down next to it.

“Shit, Rufus, this thing ain’t going nowhere,”
Josh said desperately, looking at the battered truck.

“I know that.”
Rufus pulled a bottle of water from the camper, twisted it open and put it to Josh’s lips.
“Can you hold it? You need to get some liquid in you.”

Josh answered by gripping the bottle with his good hand and drinking a little.

Rufus rose and went to the overturned Jeep. He pulled the machine gun free from where Tremaine had wedged it between the seat and the metal side of the Jeep. The man had used wire, a piece of metal and a string to rig the trigger for full automatic fire while he set up his ambush of Josh. Rufus eyed the situation for a moment and then tried to push against the hood to right the vehicle, but he couldn’t get any leverage that way, and his feet slipped in the loose gravel. He studied the situation some more. There was really only one way that he could see.