“I’ll make a break for the first building. You and Rae set up where you are. If I’m wrong, and he pops up... take him out.”
“Yes. Go anytime.”
Lucas set himself to run, took a breath, got a tight grip on Rae’s rifle, and sprinted across the open space to the first big building. The distance wasn’t long, but he’d be exposed long enough that a good shooter might try to knock him down.
He nearly slammed into the glass wall of the building. No shots. He caught his breath, waved back at Bob and Rae. And his phone was ringing. O’Brien.
“We’ve had two trucks hit by gunfire, we got two guys hurt fromglass splinters,” O’Brien said. “We’re not moving, because we can’t see exactly where the gunfire’s coming from, but we know he can see us. We’ve got to get our wounded guys out of there. We think the shooter’s probably out in the field behind the old armory buildings... Anyway, we’re stuck halfway down the street leading to Chinati, and one of the trucks will try to back out of there with our wounded guys. The other one has some guns pointing down into the field. If he gets up, we’ll get him.”
“Chinati? What’s that?”
“The art place. That’s where you’re at. Look north. Can you see the trucks?”
Lucas looked north and on a road leading out of the parking lot he could see the front grille of one of the Border Patrol’s Chevy trucks.
“Yeah, I see them. I’m behind one of the big domed buildings.”
“Okay. We think the shooter’s in the high weeds on the other side of where you are. Careful. He could be moving.”
Lucas got off the phone, realized that the buildings had long glass walls onbothsides, and that he could see clear through the building to the field on the other side. He couldn’t see anything moving in the field. Took a moment to check the curved line of buildings behind him: didn’t see anything there, either. Bob called: “Anything?”
“No.”
“Then we’re coming. We’ll hit the other end of the building you’re at,” Bob said.
“Come ahead.”
A minute later, Bob broke from the cover of the smallerbuildings, ran heavily across the street, and set up at the far corner of the building. Rae followed him ten seconds later, and then all three of them were at the corners of the building, looking out toward the field.
Lucas said into the cell phone, “Okay, I’m going up to the front end, take a peek. See what I can see.”
He was fifty feet down the length of the building and jogged toward the front: later, it occurred to him how stupid he’d been—if he could see through the building to the field, somebody in the field could see through the building to him.
He ran past the windows to the brick superstructure and peeked around the corner to the northeast, once, saw nothing, peeked again...
Bang!
He went straight down, his face burning, had the presence of mind to roll deeper behind the building. The shot, he thought, had come in from an angle, had to be from the northeast, and he shouted to Bob, “I’ve been hit. I can’t see out of one eye, I’m down...”
Bob shouted, “I’m coming...”
Lucas pushed himself up and shouted in the direction where Bob had been, “He’s got an angle on us, don’t come any further than me.”
Everything in his left eye was blurry and red and then Bob was kneeling next to him, and Rae came up, and Lucas said, “Don’t poke your head around the building, for Christ sakes... How bad is it?”
Bob said, “You got the same thing as Rae. The slug missed your head by an inch, but must have hit the bricks. Your skin is full of brick splinters, on your forehead and in your hair. You’re bleeding,but it’s superficial, I think. You got a lot of blood rolling down into your eye, through your eyebrow.”
“Probably why I can’t see shit,” Lucas said. His stomach was tight as a drum, from the stress. Blinded?
Rae said, “Hang on,” and, a minute later, said, “Lay down in the dirt and turn your face up. I’m gonna wash your eye out. Bob, keep watch.”
She had a bottle of Dasani water stuck under her vest and Lucas lay down, and she poured a stream of cool water into his eye and off his forehead. He blinked a few times and his vision began to clear.
She asked, “So you’re wearing a really expensive shirt, right?”
“What?”
She asked again and he said, “It’s a Façonnable... why?”
