Free Niceville by Carsten Stroud Page B

as likely that the shooter meant to kill them right from the start. He had already killed the two people in the chopper.”
    “But why kill the cops too? If he could just disable the cars?”
    “From a military point of view, it’s just more efficient. No survivors, no witnesses, no risk.”
    “Oh, Nick—such an ugly thing.”
    “Not really. Just military.”
    “You coming home?”
    “Be there in a while.”
    “How long’s a while?”
    “Before dark. You really still have that Glock?”
    “I do. It’s right here in the glove box.”
    “Is it loaded?”
    “If it isn’t it’s a paperweight.”
    “Honey, please take it with you.”
    “Do I
look
like Dirty Harriet?”
    “I don’t know. Squint, and say, ‘Do you feel lucky?’ ”
    “I’ll take the gun.”
    “Good. Love you.”
    “Love you back. Stay safe. Bye.”

Charlie Danziger Considers His Options
    After a long interlude during which he gave some thought to the caprices of fate, Danziger came carefully out of the barn, his legs unsteady, his fingers bloody on his shirt, his face white and slick.
    He dropped to his knees, pulled out his cell. His mouth was dry and a weary weight was dragging him down.
    The cell was buzzing as he put it to his ear.
    “Shut up,” he explained, in a hoarse, growling whisper. “I’m shot. Yeah. Shot. Like with bullets?”
    A pause while he listened to Coker.
    “Lung, I think. It’s sucking.”
    More listening.
    “Yeah, I have some plastic in the car. But I’m going to have to get to a medic.”
    Coker talking again.
    “A through-and-through? I can’t tell. I gotta find a mirror.”
    More talk from Coker.
    “No. Merle’s gone. But I hit him. I saw him take the round.”
    A crackle from the cell.
    “Small of the back. Lower right. He went through the barn boards and it all went to shit.”
    He listened for a time, his craggy face white and his lips blue.
    “Yeah, well, I’m not used to shooting a guy in the back. I guess you have to practice.”
    More buzzing from the cell phone speaker.
    “No,” said Danziger, shaking his head. “Not by myself. We’ll deal with him later.”
    More heated talk, this time with swearing. Danziger listened for a while, said no again a couple of times, added a
fuck you
for emphasis, and clicked off.
    He got to his feet and staggered back into the barn. With his free hand, he riffled around in the Chevy until he found the plastic bag the manual had come in. There was duct tape on a nail next to the door. He used the edge of an old wood-saw to rip off three long strips.
    Then he tried to take his shirt off with one hand while using the other to press down on the bullet hole in his chest. After a time he gave that up and just ripped the fabric away, tearing the shirt to pieces and exposing an ugly purple-black hole in the fleshy part of his chest about three inches below his right nipple. Every time he breathed out, pink bubbles of blood would foam up out of the hole.
    It wasn’t bleeding that much, which meant most of the blood was staying inside his chest. Given enough time, his chest cavity would fill up and he’d drown in his own blood. Unless it had nicked an artery, in which case the same thing would happen, only at warp speed, and he’d have about three minutes to live. He’d have to wait and see.
    Coker had asked him if the wound was a through-and-through. This would be a good thing to know, he decided, so he opened up the shreds of his shirt, trying to figure out which shred had been part of the back of the shirt. Far as he could see, there was no exit hole in any of these pieces.
    Gotta make sure
, he thought.
    He walked back over to the Chevy and tried to get a look at his back in the passenger-side mirror. He used that side because the mirror was convex and gave him a wider view.
    Aside from learning that objects in this mirror were closer than they appeared, he saw nothing but unbroken skin on his back.
    No through-and-through. The slug was still inside him.