The man readpoliceandu.s. marshalon their vests and said, “You got it,” and disappeared.
Bob grinned and said, “Didn’t take him long to make up his mind.”
From the office, the counter woman called, “Is it over yet?”
Lucas called back, “Not quite, but we’re close,” and to Bob, “Fifteen seconds? Something like that.”
Twenty seconds later, Bob said, “Here they come.”
A black SUVpulled into the parking lot across the street and an elderly man got out and went to the front of the store. Less than a minute later, another SUV, identical to the first, pulled into the parking lot and a younger man got out and went to the door. Ten seconds later, four more cars crawled around the corner and bumped over the curb into the lot at the back of the store. One man jumped out of one of the cars and motioned another car forward until the bumper nearly touched the back of the building, a door that Lucas and Bob couldn’t see.
Lucas’s handset burped: Weaver said, “Go.”
Lucas and Bob went out the door, walking fast, Lucas in the lead, to Bob’s left, headed straight across the street.
Weaver shouted “Go”into his handset and saw Lucas and Bob burst through the motel door into the street. He turned to look for his FBI teams rounding the corner of the building, then looked back at Lucas and Bob. They’d crossed the street and were into the parking lot when two more men ran out of the motel behind them and both raised guns that Weaver recognized as old MAC-10 submachine guns.
Astonished by their sudden appearance, he saw them lift the guns toward Lucas and Bob and he screamed something he didn’t recognize himself, maybe an Indian war cry, and lifted his own Sig at the two men and began firing at them and saw them falter and Lucas and Bob went down and Weaver kept pulling the trigger on the Sig until it went dry and the two men were still up butstaggering as a storm of gunfire erupted from behind the store and the two men twisted, turned, and went down. Somebody was shouting, “Stop, stop...” and Weaver realized it was him.
Lucas and Bobcrossed the street at a run and then heard a man scream and Lucas half-turned and there was an explosion of gunfire, coming from behind them, Lucas thought, and he was thumped hard in the back and he went down on his stomach, skidding hard on the blacktop, stripping skin off his knees and elbows and one hand, his gun hand; he’d lost the handset he’d held in the other hand and he struggled to get turned around, and he looked back and saw the man with the Hawaiian shirt staggering, apparently hit by gunfire; and another man behind him, also in a Hawaiian shirt, with a long gun in his hand and he was trying to fire back at the feds who’d come down the side of the building. Still turning, confused, trying to get around, Lucas saw Weaver in the shadow of the palm tree firing a pistol at the two men and then the men were both down and Lucas thought,What the fuck?, and looked to his right.
And saw Bob unmoving on the ground.
Gun in hand, he crawled toward Bob and saw Weaver running toward them and he heard glass breaking, a lot of glass, more shouting. He got to Bob, who was lying on his side, facing away from him, and as he rolled him over he saw that Bob had been hit in the head and neck.
“No, Jesus...”
Another FBI man was sprawled at the side of the store, an agent standing over him with a gun in his hand. Weaver ran across thestreet, paused at the downed FBI man, said something to him and then ran toward Lucas and Bob, shouting, “Calling 911!”
When he came up, he looked down at them, then looked desperately back at the side where the other man was lying, and then down at Lucas and then over at the two men in Hawaiian shirts, dead on the ground, and then back to Lucas and he said, “I think, I think...”
He didn’t say what he thought, but Lucas knew what it was.
“Ah, Jesus, he can’t be.” Lucas plucked at Bob’s body, trying to get an arm under his head, to help him breathe if there was breath left in him, but there wasn’t.
Weaver was saying, “C’mon, man, are you okay? Are... Jesus, you’re hit in the back, are you okay?”
Lucas felt no pain, he was staring down at Bob, but Bob had left the building, and Lucas knew it. “Bob! Bob!”
Weaver was pulling at him. “Are you okay... Are you okay?”
Lucas rose to his knees and Weaver was shouting at him, “Let’s get the vest off...”
Lucas let them pull the vest off; his back hurt, but not like it would with a gunshot wound. Weaver shouted, “You’re okay, you’re fine, you got hit but the vest took it...”
Lucas looked up at Weaver, who’d lost it: every word came out as a shout, almost a scream.
Lucas grabbed one of his arms and pulled himself up, said, “Easy, man. Easy.”
He looked down at Bob. His friend lay on the crumbling blacktop, his M4 pinned under his body, a pool of blood under his head, a gaping wound above his half-open eyes that were staring up at the overcast sky, at nothing at all.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Lucas heard, dimly,somewhere else, “Fire! There’s a fire! Fire! Hey!”
He tried to step away from Weaver, but his knees were shaking, and Weaver held on to him, and Lucas sank back on the blacktop next to Bob’s body, head down, arms wrapped around his knees, stunned, unable to think, unable to speak.
