Her truck was parked in front of the dead bodies in the lot.
“Your work?”
He shrugged.
“I was busy trying to get myself killed. I don’t know who did this. Probably the guy you sent over the cliff.”
She nodded.
“I can see it going down like that.”
She chewed on her lip.
“I should have brought beer for this,” she shifted her eyes away. “I took one of the bottles and ran your prints.”
He felt a kick in the gut. Not a physical manifestation, but it hurt as much as his shoulder all the same.
Reason kicked in a few seconds later. Why wouldn’t she run his prints. Try to find out who he was for real.
“How long?”
He could feel her watching him. Her lips were pursed in a frown.
He noticed she kept her hand on the strap of her holster on her belt.
She stopped, spread her feet shoulder width apart and watched him
some more.
He wanted to whistle the theme from Fistful of Dollars, or mention HIGH NOON, but the set of her face made him think she wouldn't like the joke.
"You popped," she said.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he tilted an ear toward the sky.
If she ran his name, black choppers full of men who wanted him dead wouldn't be far behind.
“How long,” he asked again and glanced at the van.
It was easy to keep his arms at his side, shoulders relaxed.
Jo was tense enough already. Any sudden moves on his part and she might draw.
He didn't want her to get hurt, not by him, not by anyone so he needed to move.
Fast.
"I'm going to take you in," said Jo.
She kept one hand on her holster while the other fished up handcuffs.
He wasn't sure what her system showed he was wanted for. It could be murder, treason, hell, even listed him as a cop killer.
It was enough that she didn't shoot him on sight, but whatever trust he had built up with her over the past several days had evaporated when she ran his name.
Damn it, he muttered.
He was going to have to get gone before someone showed up and she was part of the mess to clean up.
That was the worst part of being wanted.
The men who were after him had no quarrels with leaving dead bodies behind to cover their tracks.
That they pinned the blame on him just added to his frustration.
She unclipped her holster.
Something in his face must have shifted.
He knew people saw it in him every so often, no matter how much he practiced in keeping it neutral. And every time they saw that look, they were afraid.
He presented his wrists in front of him at waist level, hoping it would key her down. It did.
He watched her shoulders slump as she released some tension and pulled out the handcuffs.
The chopper roared over the treetops making her jump.
Brill leaned forward, grabbed her wrist and yanked her under the shadow in front of his van.
He slipped the pistol from her holster as he spun her down and covered her with his body.
The chopper wouldn't present overhead except as a distraction. That meant there were men in the woods.
Not close enough to shoot yet, and no snipers, or they would have taken the two of them out while they were talking.
Jo struggled under his arm. He clamped down and she whimpered.
"Still," he breathed in a whisper.
She watched his face again, shark eyes scanning the shadows under the trees.
The helicopter whirred back over the clearing.
His head swiveled, tracking for patterns, looking for anything out of place.
It moved slowly, methodically. Her gun moved with his chin.
She shivered.
"When I say," he whispered from the corner of his mouth. "Get the shotgun from your truck. Stay low. Get behind the engine block. Nod if you read me."
He flicked his eyes down and she gave a quick jerk of her head.
"Now."
He shifted left and began firing into the woods as he moved toward the front of the van and away from her.
The helicopter was swirling up dust, the noise of the rotors roaring in the clearing.
He still heard someone scream.
Bullets stitched the metal behind him sounding like a swarm of bees streaking from the woods.
Brill slid under the hood of the van, crawling under toward the back.
He aimed at the chopper and sent three rounds into the blades.
The pilot was smart. He peeled away to hover out of range.
Brill rolled over and peeked around the tire.
Jo was behind the tire of her car, shotgun in hand. She was breathing fast, eyes wide as adrenaline pumped through her system.
She glanced at him.
He mimicked racking the shotgun.
She glanced at it in her hands, almost surprised and racked it. The distinct sound echoed through the clearing.
The men in the woods began firing at her position.
Brill watched for movement in the trees, took aim and fired three shots. The fusillade of bullets stopped.
He used a hand signal to tell her to stay down, stay put, and hoped she understood.
Her Glock 17 held sixteen rounds, fifteen in the clip and one in the chamber. His count was down to four shots left.
Her shotgun would have six, plus three in a Velcro sleeve on the stock, and a backup magazine for the Glock on the holster.
Twenty-eight bullets for unknown number of assailants.
He closed his eyes, drew a four count of breathing, held it four and released it.
The training kicked in and he breathed again. The simple meditation exercise was a trigger mechanism to calm his heart rate and remove the chaos of battle from his mind.
The pain receded enough to ignore completely.
He pictured the helicopter. It was configured for six men in the hold, plus two seats up front. If the pilot flew alone, that meant seven men in the woods.
He dropped four so far, which left three men armed with automatic weapons and military training, former Spec Ops guys that Barraque liked to hire, hunting him and the Deputy.
They would be circling around now, crawling below the bushes to limit his sightlines.
At the first sign of resistance, they would have fallen back further in the shadows, using the trees for cover.
He was lucky to hit four of them, but he had trained a lot.
Luck was easy to come by when you spent a lifetime killing people.
One would be moving toward the Deputy, two toward his position.
Shelby would have told the teams about his Don Quixote syndrome. Couldn't leave a lady in distress.
Even if that lady was packing a Mossberg and had proven herself in a fight.
They would try to take her hostage to draw him out.
He could take out both of them when they did, but she might get hurt and the man sent to hunt him would take advantage of his distraction.
Better to draw him out first.
He needed a grenade. Or a distraction.
He glanced at now quiet rusty pickup budged up against a rock. The driver’s door open.
Jo’s doing, he suspected. She killed the engine when she arrived, checked the driver’s pulse.
He sighted down the barrel at the exposed gas tank on the rear of the truck, pulled the trigger.
A neat little hole opened. Gasoline drizzled out, drips at first, then in a slow gush, spreading across the ground in a widening puddle under the truck.
He aimed again at a rock under the truck. Smaller. Harder to focus.
But maybe enough to-
He used a second bullet to ping off the rock, sending a spark into the puddle. Flames licked up in a whoosh, surrounding the tire and starting a black cloud of smoke as the rubber caught.
He jumped up and ran, firing twice into the woods where he suspected the men might be.
They fired back, too late to aim, because he knew he wasn’t moving fast enough. More like a labored lumber, but it worked.
Their shots chewed up the ground behind him, or whizzed through the air over his head.
He aimed his pistol at Jo as he sprinted across the clearing. She scrambled to bring the Mossberg to bear, rolling down on her back.
Too late. She stared into the barrel of her own gun and screamed.
Brill shot the first soldier as he popped around the side of a tree. His head jerked back as he dropped, rifle flung wide.
Brill hit his knees and slid past Jo, gun still trained on the tree line.
She squeezed off a shot at no one.
He ducked behind the wheel of her car and scanned their surroundings.
"I thought you were shooting me," she gasped.
"You almost shot back," he answered.
The fireball died down and they were still exposed.
“Mag,” he said and held out his hand.
She slapped a replacement into it. He ejected the spent one, inserted the new and slammed it home.
The two remaining men would back into the shadows and circle around again, moving up on the edge of the clearing until they had a clear shot at the two of them.
"Two left," he told her.
"Who are they?"
"After me."
"I pretty much figured that one out on my own Sherlock."
"Watson," he gave a half grin. "You're the detective."
"Deputy," she told him.
“Shoot now,” he ordered. “Clear your weapon.”
Jo leaned around the tire and fired her six rounds into the woods.
Brill shoved up, ran into the woods.
They were Barraque trained. He knew what they would do. Duck and cover.
Wait for a break and return fire.
It’s what he had been taught in the camp in Virginia.
Good tactics with a tactically superior force.
But Brill learned in the jungles of Africa before that.
He used the cover of the shotgun blasts to mask his approach and leaned against a tree.
He was behind them now, he thought.
Confirmed when the first guy moved up to return fire.
Brill sent a round into the back of his head, and caught movement of the last man when he twisted in surprise.
He got to watch his killer pull the trigger.
Then all they could hear was the chopper, still hovering a couple hundred feet above the ground.
Brill shoved the pistol in his pocket, grabbed a fallen rifle and moved to the edge of the trees.
He leaned against the bark to steady his aim, focused on the front sight until it became a blur with the cockpit and the shadow outline of the pilot.
From this distance, it wouldn’t do much. Especially a bullet flying into the back wash of the blades. The trajectory would ball all off.
He pulled the trigger anyway.
The cockpit windshield starred. That was all he needed. The pilot was a flier, not a combat technician. He pulled up, and pulled out, hovering a half mile away.
Calling in for orders.
Or back up.
He gathered weapons and ammunition off the two fallen men. They didn’t have much.
Shelby would have told them he was dangerous.
But the dead don’t have regrets.