Cover of Night Read online

  The earth shook; a gigantic boom rocked the entire house. A tiny part of Creed credited the upheaval to the kiss, but the bigger part of him knew better, and he wrapped both arms around her as he rolled the two of them off the sofa to the floor, covering her protectively with his body.

  16

  AS SOON AS TEAGUE BLEW THE BRIDGE, BILLY, TROY, AND Blake began laying down fire into the outer rim of homes. They weren’t deliberately trying to hit anyone, but neither did they care if they did. The only thing that kept their aim a little high was the knowledge that a bloodbath would bring every law officer in Idaho down on them when it was discovered, which could be bothersome.

  Blake was using a Weatherby Mark V Magnum .257, a truly sweet piece of work that packed a heavy punch. Billy had a Winchester; Troy, a Springfield M21. The Weatherby and Winchester were good hunting rifles; the Springfield was more suitable for sniping. Teague’s chosen weapon was a Parker-Hale M85, with a bipod system for stability. Both the Springfield and the Parker-Hale were long-distance rifles, capable of reaching out and touching someone a mile distant, if the person pulling the trigger had sufficient skill.

  Teague had chosen the weapons with their differences in mind. Blake and Billy would take the night shifts, when the infrared scopes would be needed. The scopes had a physical limit; anything beyond four hundred yards just wasn’t going to show up. So their rifles were best for the middle ranges. Troy and Teague could use high-powered binoculars during the day, and their long-range rifles would put the fear of God into anyone they saw moving about the community. These, too, had infrared scopes, but Troy and Teague wouldn’t have to depend solely on them.

  Goss and Toxtel were positioned to move in close to where the bridge had once spanned the rushing mountain stream, once the debris had settled. With their handguns they were responsible for any close-range action, which Teague didn’t expect at all.

  The roar of the explosion and the subsequent rain of debris hadn’t yet settled when people began running out of their houses to see what was happening. Calmly and deliberately, the four men began shooting, driving the good citizens of Trail Stop farther and farther back.

  As soon as the lights went out, Cal was moving, reaching for his weatherproof flashlight and heading for his door. If the electricity was out at the feed store, which was one of the first buildings on the way into Trail Stop, then it was almost certainly out for the entire community—and Cate was alone in her house. He was at the door when the explosion knocked him off his feet; he was already rolling when he landed, the flashlight gripped tight in his hand so he wouldn’t lose it.

  Bomb.

  The darkness, the explosion, the blast of the percussion, threw him straight into battle mode. Adrenaline roared through his body, and he didn’t stop to think, didn’t have to think, because this was not second nature at all but first nature, his nature. Thrusting the flashlight into his front pocket, he opened the door and crawled out onto the landing of the outside stairs. There were no vertical safety railings around the landing, just a frame made of weathered two-by-fours. He gripped the edge of the landing and swung himself over, hanging for a split second before dropping into the darkness. Since he couldn’t see the ground, it was difficult to anticipate and control his landing, but familiarity let him judge it within a cat’s whisker. He bent his knees to absorb the shock, tucked into a roll, and came up behind his parked pickup.

  He was already on the ground when the first shot was fired.

  His ears were ringing from the explosion, but he could still pinpoint the direction the shots were coming from…correction: directions…four different firing locations. Rifle fire, from across the stream. The explosion had come from the direction of the bridge; maybe a vehicle had exploded while crossing the bridge, but he didn’t think so, the sound was all wrong. Since there was nothing else in that direction, instinct told him the bridge had been blown. Why and by whom were questions that would wait. He had to get to Cate.

  A heavy round punched at an angle through the walls of his living room, blowing splinters of wood over the pickup as it exited. Whoever was on the other side of the stream was systematically shooting into the houses.

  From the bridge, the feed store was the third building on the right; Neenah’s house was the first, and was one of the most exposed. Creed had gone to her house, which meant Cal had to consider that his former commanding officer might be dead, or at least wounded. He couldn’t count on help from that quarter.

  He rose to a low crouch, staying behind the pickup’s engine block, and jerked open the passenger door. The Mossberg shotgun was behind the seat, along with a couple of boxes of shells. He tore open the cargo pocket on the right leg of his pants, dumped the shells in it, then closed the pocket by pressing the Velcro tight. There was one other item he was certain would be needed, and he grabbed the small green tackle box containing his first-aid gear.

  Almost drowned out by the rifle fire, shrill screams of fright and pain reached his ears. Everyone would have come out of their houses, he realized, maybe even been deliberately driven out of them. Now they were out in the open, and sitting ducks.

  “Down!” he roared as he angled back and to the right, trying to keep a building, a tree—anything—between him and where those rifles were situated. “Everybody take cover! Get behind your cars!”

  There were fairly large open gaps between the houses; Trail Stop was a loosely constructed community. When he had to cross a gap, he put his head down and ran like hell, zigzagging like a champion tailback. One of the shooters picked him up almost immediately and sent a bullet whining behind his head. He rolled and darted and finally dived headlong behind the next house, scraping his arms on loose gravel and fetching up hard against an outdoor faucet that dug into his shoulder.

  Fuck! The shooters had night-vision scopes, or maybe even infrared. What the fucking hell was going on? Who were these guys? Cops? Some kind of military action? Maybe some sort of survivalist group with a hard-on for somebody in Trail Stop? Didn’t matter. They weren’t just shooting blind. They could see him; they could see everyone.

  They couldn’t see through walls, though.

  To minimize their clear shots, he needed to get as many houses, vehicles, trees, any solid object at all, between him and their positions. That meant angling away from Cate, because the road didn’t bisect Trail Stop down the middle; it curled to the left, leaving two-thirds of the land—and most of the houses—on the right. There hadn’t been any plan for the layout for Trail Stop; people had built houses wherever the hell they wanted, without rhyme or reason.

  He mentally placed all of the residences as he ran. Cate’s house was at the upper left end of the community, the thinly populated side of the road, but it wasn’t completely exposed. Her garage was behind it; then there were two more houses stuck back there on the left. If she would just stay inside, on the bottom floor…

  But her bedroom was on the top floor, and he didn’t know the exact angle of attack the shooters were using. Even now she could be lying on the floor in a pool of blood—

  He gritted his teeth and pushed the image away, because he couldn’t function in a world that didn’t have Cate Nightingale in it.

  The ground beneath him was rough, uneven, slowing him down, plus he couldn’t see shit. As he ran, he passed people who were coming from the outer rim of houses, going toward the gunshots and commotion. Almost everyone had a flashlight; some of them carried rifles or shotguns. “Turn off your flashlights!” he yelled at them as he passed. “Don’t go any farther! They have night-vision goggles!”

  The little group halted. “Who are you?” someone asked, half-alarmed, half-cautious.

  “Cal,” he yelled back at them. “Pull back! Pull back!” Then a lucky shot—God, he hoped it was lucky, he hoped none of the shooters had that kind of skill—blasted a tree just a couple of feet from him. Again he hit the ground rolling, blinking at the sudden sting of blood in his eyes, and put a large tree at his back.

  A lon