Free Sudden Prey by John Sandford Page A

goddamnit.”
    Stadic turned the chair and straddled it, his arms crossed on the back. “What?”
    “Two guys showed up at my crib last night,” Harp said. “Put some guns on me. They were looking for your name.”
    “My name?”
    “Yeah. They knew I was working with a cop, but they didn’t know your name.”
    “Jesus Christ, Harp . . .”
    “They said they’d cut one finger off Jas every ten seconds until I came out with it, and had something to prove it by. They were gonna cut off two fingers just to show that they was tellin’ the truth. And after they got all ten fingers, they said, they were gonna cut out her eyes and then cut her throat and then they were gonna start on me.”
    “You told them?” Stadic’s voice rose in disbelief.
    “Goddamn right I told them,” Harp said. “They cut her pointer finger off right there, on a bread board. She was all tied up and gagged and flopping around, and they were like they was killed chickens or something . . . couple of goddamn mean crackers. I been in the joint with these motherfuckers before. They got little tears tattooed under their eyes, one for each man they killed, and when you start tattooing them on, you better be able to prove it to the rest of the crazies. This crackhead kid’s got three of them and the fucker with the knife got two.”
    “You coulda said anything,” Stadic said.
    Harp shook his head. “They wanted proof. I had a little proof.”
    Now 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 of log 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