The shift change came around three in the afternoon. Four men with long guns came out of the lodge and went into the woods at four points around the clearing. Four other guys came out of the woods and went to the lodge.
“Rifles,” Hawk said. “Look like .30-.30’s.”
“Okay,” I said. “We know that setup. I wonder what’s in the house.”
“Some guns,” Hawk said. “But we don’t know where or how many.”
“And maybe Susan,” I said.
“Doubtful,” Hawk said.
“Got to know,” I said.
“Yes.”
There were some squirrels in the woods, looking oddly out of place away from the city. And there was bird sound. When the sun went down around five thirty it began to get colder.
“The best thing for Susan would be to save herself,” I said.
“Don’t look like she can right now,” Hawk said. “Maybe we just get her out and away and then let her save herself.”
“Yeah.”
“Course we eliminate Russell and then maybe there be nothing to save herself from.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be good for her.”
Hawk was silent for a while. When the sun went down floodlights went on all around the lodge, lighting the entire area.
“Photoelectric switch,” I said.
Hawk said, “You saying we go easy on Russell?”
“I don’t know, exactly, what I’m saying. I don’t know enough. I am trying to make sense out of stuff I don’t understand.”
“That called life, babe,” Hawk said.
“Maybe she needs to be able to save herself and that may mean dealing with Russell.”
“I been working on the assumption,” Hawk said, “that Russell is a dead man. I owe Russell some things.”
“I know,” I said. “I been thinking about how we’d decide which one gets him. But maybe not.”
“Ah’s jess a simple darkie, bawse. Killing the motherfucker seem like a good idea to me.”
“But if it’s bad for Susan?”
“Then we don’t,” Hawk said. “Ah ain’t that simple. We not here to fuck her up. I don’t need to kill Russell, I’d just like it.”
“I’d like it too,” I said. “Maybe more than you.”
“I would guess, maybe more than anybody,” Hawk said.
“At the moment I think we shouldn’t unless we have to,” I said.
In the light that spilled into the woods from the floodlit clearing I could see Hawk shrug.
“Delayed gratification, babe,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
Lights went on and off inside the lodge but there was nothing in the pattern that told us anything. We couldn’t see enough through the windows to help. The outdoor guard shifts changed. Hawk and I put our hands into our pockets and sat and watched. We ate some granola bars and some trail mix. We dozed a little, but not much. The night went on. The lights inside the lodge went off, except for one downstairs. The outside floods stayed on. The outdoor shifts changed again. Toward morning it rained. I stood slowly in the downpour and shrugged my back and neck. I felt like a junk car.
“Russell show up now,” Hawk said, “I think we overmatched.”
“Have some trail mix,” I said.
Hawk took a handful and chewed it without pleasure.
“I look like fucking trail mix to you?” he said. “I look like a fucking granola bar? I eggs Benedict, and mimosa, I room service, man.”
“The rain is nice,” I said.
“Refreshing,” Hawk said.
Along with the woodsmoke I could smell coffee, from the lodge.
“If they start to fry bacon in there,” I said, “I’m going to cry.” We were both on our feet, stretching quietly, talking softly, trying to get warm and loose without disturbing the lodge patrol. It was raining steadily and still dark.
“We plug that chimney,” I said, “and the smoke will back up into the house and drive people out.”
“What if Susan in there?”
“They would bring her out too,” I said. “They got no reason to want her dead. I assume Russell likes her.”
“Means one of us got to get up on the roof,” Hawk said.
“Yes.”
We stood in the rain watching the house. There were no birds today, no squirrels. I was looking at the power and phone cable where it ran to the house.
“We need to do some stuff,” I said. “We need to confuse and distract them. We need to cause a diversion.”
“We good at causing diversions,” Hawk said.
“Think we could shoot that power cable out?”
“From here?” Hawk said. “Not with a handgun.”
“We could get a rifle,” I said.
Hawk smiled. “Yes, we can. I know where there’s four.”
“Closest one is down there,” I said. “Maybe seventy-five yards.”
Hawk said, “I’ll get the rifle. You circle around behind the house on the hill back of it. When I shoot out the power cables they’ll all come charging over here. You get on the roof and stuff something in the chimney.”
“While they’re chasing you.”
“While I shooting their ass with my new rifle,” Hawk said.
“I like it,” I said. “Give me time to get around there. I’ll go for the roof when you start shooting.”
“No hurry,” Hawk said. “I be getting my new rifle while you circling.”
I moved off through the woods, staying crouched, moving slowly through the rain. Stepping carefully in the spongy wet leaf mold on the forest floor. The sound of the rain spattering down among the evergreens deadened the sound of my movement. I took a careful slow half hour to get around behind the house. From the slope behind it I could see that the lodge was built into the side of the hill and from a tree I could jump to the roof. Maybe.
I found the best tree and crouched beside it. The rain had soaked through my jacket and some of it trickled down my neck and along my spine. I stayed in the tree, crouched among the bottom branches, for maybe another fifteen minutes. Then I heard the first shot. It was a rifle, and there was a second and a third. The third shattered the porcelain mount on the lodge where the power cables went in. All the floodlights went out. The cable fell free and sparked as it hit the wet ground. There was movement in the woods below, and from the guesthouse some of the security people appeared. The rifle sounded again and one of the security people fell. Gunfire started back toward the woods. I went up the tree in the faint gray light, got high enough and launched out onto the roof of the lodge. The roof was covered with hand-split shakes and made a decent footing, even in the rain. I scrambled up to the roof ridge and along it to the chimney opening. There were two flues in the chimney. The woodsmoke was heavy and hot close up as it rose from the open flue. I shrugged out of my jacket, jammed the ammunition into my hip pocket, and shoved the wadded-up jacket into the flue. It made a sodden solid mass and no more smoke escaped. Below, the gunfire increased. Most of it aimed into the woods, and I was peripherally aware of movement in the open yard. I slid along the wet shakes down the front slope of the roof and landed on the cross balcony, and flattened out on the floor with the automatic in my hand. I could hear footsteps moving in the house and men’s voices. There was yelling. The outside security people were firing at random into the woods. Smoke began to seep out from the glass doors. I heard doors open below and more voices and the sounds of confusion. I edged along the floor of the balcony and peered down into the yard. Four men came out of the house with handguns. One carried a flashlight. Two more men came out behind them.
A voice came up out of the hubbub, “What the fuck happened?” Humanity’s cry.
“Must be something blown in the wiring, the lights went out and there’s a fire somewhere.”
“How many shooting?”
“I don’t know.”
Rifle fire came from a different part of the woods.
“Jesus, they’re shooting at the vehicles.”
The flash trained on the Jeep Wagoneer and I saw it cant slightly as the air went out of a tire.
“Everybody out of the house?”
“I think so. How many of us were there?”
Another rifle shot from the woods and the flashlight spun and skittered along the ground.
“Jesus, they got Gino.”
“Fan out, God damn it, fan out.”
I turned and snake-walked across the deck on my stomach and slid open one of the glass doors. Smoke billowed out. I stayed on the floor and slithered along into the house. Close to the floor there was still breathable air. And I had an advantage on everyone else. I knew the house wasn’t on fire.
There were four bedrooms on the top floor of the lodge, organized in a square around an interior balcony that opened onto a cathedral-ceilinged first-floor space that ran the length of the lodge. I moved as fast as I could on my stomach. My eyes were stinging and watering. It was hard to breathe. There was no one in any of the bedrooms. In the dawn half-light, muddled by the smoke, it was hard to see much more than that. I took a deep breath at floor level after the last bedroom proved empty. Then I stood and went down the stairs into the main room. There was no one there. I went to the fireplace that covered one wall at the far end, and raked the burning logs out onto the floor with a hooked poker. The carpet began to smolder. I was fighting to hold my breath. I moved the length of the room and dropped to the floor and breathed as shallow as I could. There was no one in the main hall. I hadn’t thought there would be, but the disappointment that she wasn’t here felt like something heavy in my chest. The back side of the lodge was set into the hillside so there were no windows on the first-floor back wall. Holding my breath I went back up to the second floor and out a back window. It was barely a five-foot drop into the woods on the hill. Behind me the floor of the lodge had caught and I could see the tips of the flames shimmering against the second-floor windows.
The rain was pelting down now. I had shipped to Korea out of Fort Lewis some time back and I remembered how often it rained in Washington. I was moving through the woods in a crouch, circling back toward the road and the place where we’d parked the car. The rain was cold, and without my jacket it soaked through my black turtle-neck sweater. Behind me I heard a large huff as the flames burst out of the second-floor windows of the lodge. We hadn’t found Susan yet, but we were certainly annoying the Costigans. Better than nothing.