Free Sudden Prey by John Sandford

Stadic was very quiet. ''What proof?''
    ''I had some pictures taken.''
    ''You motherfucker . . .'' Stadic stood up, kicked the chair aside, his hand moving toward his pistol. Harp held his hands up.
    ''It was from way back when, when I didn't know you. And I had Jas's motherfuckin' finger laying there like a dead shrimp, all curled up. What the hell was I supposed to do?''
    ''You coulda tried lying,'' Stadic shouted. His fingers twitched at the gun butt.
    ''You wasn't there ,'' Harp said. ''You don't know .'' Stadic took a breath, as though he'd just topped a hill, turned in place, then said, ''So what'd they want with my name?''
    ''They need some information from you.''
    ''Tell me.'' He was nibbling nervously at a thumbnail, ripped off a piece of nail, spit it out, tasted blood. The nail was bleeding, and he sucked at it, the blood salty in his mouth.
    ''They want personnel files,'' Harp said. ''From the police department.''
    LACHAISE HAD SPENT WHOLE DAYS THINKING ABOUT it, daydreaming it, when he was locked up: the requirements of the coming wars. Us against Them. They would need a base. In the countryside, somewhere. There'd be a series oflog cabins linked with storm sewer pipe, six feet underground and more sewer pipe set into the hills as bunkers. Honda generators for each cabin, with internal wells and septic fields.
    Weapons: sniper rifles to keep the attackers off, heavy-duty assault rifles for up close. Hidden land mines with remote triggers. Armor-piercing rockets. He'd close his eyes and see the assaults happening, the attackers falling back as they met the sweeping fire from the web . . .
    The attackers were a little less certain; some combination of ATF agents and blacks from the Chicago ghettos, Indians, Mexicans. Though that didn't seem to make a lot of sense, sometimes; so sometimes, they were all ATF agents, dressed in black uniforms and masks . . .
    Daydreams.
    THE REALITY WAS A COUPLE OF TRUCKS AND A RUNDOWN house in a near-slum.
    LaChaise and Butters drove down to the Cities in Elmore's truck, with Martin trailing behind. They needed two vehicles, they decided, at least for a while. Butters and Martin caught Elmore in the barn, while Sandy was out riding, and squeezed him for the truck keys.
    ''Just overnight,'' Butters said, standing too close. '' Martin's got some warrants out on his car, if the cops check-- nothing serious, but we gotta have some kind of backup. We won't do nothin' with it.''
    ''Guys, I tell you, we're moving stuff today . . .'' Elmore stuttered. Martin and Butters scared Elmore. Martin, Elmore thought, was a freak, a pent-up homosexual hillbilly crazy in love with LaChaise. Butters had the flat eyes of a snapping turtle, and was simply nuts.
    Elmore tried to get out of it, but Martin put his hands in Elmore's coat pocket, and when Elmore tried to wrench away,Butters pushed him from the other side. Martin had the keys and said, ''We'll get them back to you, bud.''
    THE HOUSE WAS A SHABBY TWO-STORY CLAPBOARD wreck on a side street in the area called Frogtown. The outside needed paint, the inside needed an exterminator. Half the basement was wet and the circuit box hanging over the damp concrete floor was a fire marshal's nightmare. Martin had brought in three Army-surplus beds, a dilapidated monkeyshit-yellow couch and two matching chairs, and a dinette set, all from Goodwill, and a brand-new twenty-seven-inch Sony color TV.
    ''Good place, if we don't burn to death,'' Martin said. The house smelled like wet plaster and fried eggs. ''That wiring down the basement is a marvel.''
    ''Hey, it's fine,'' LaChaise said, looking around.
    No web of sewer pipe, no Honda generators. No land mines.
    That evening, Butters sat in one of the broken-down easy chairs, his head back and his eyes closed. Martin sat crosslegged on the floor with his arrows, unscrewing the field points, replacing them with hundred-grain Thunderheads, a can of beer by one foot. He would occasionally look at LaChaise with a