would not have flinched.
Coker’s third round took Billy Goodhew’s head and upper body off and spattered it all over the prisoner partition behind him. It also took out the rear window and, in one of those weird accidents that happen in firefights, sent a glittering sun-drenched sheet of the deputy’s arterial blood and brain tissue across the windshield of the patrol unit on his tail.
Both state cars broke hard, tires smoking, grilles dipping down, cutting left and right, coming to a tail-to-tail blocking position, overlapped, trying to establish a defensive stand.
Coker put his fourth round into the driver’s side of the windshield on the left-hand car, saw the roof stipple with fragments and the shattered window cover itself with a sheet of black blood. Nobody popped out of the passenger door, so Coker figured the driver was alone.
Poor bastard.
Thanks to the recession, most of the state and county guys had been cut back to singles, even at night. It was a goddam disgrace. Fucking bean counters down in Cap City. They’d never have to make a DUI stop at two in the morning, all alone out on a deserted highway, pulling over some overloaded black Escalade with tinted windows and God-only-knows-what waiting inside it.
Coker turned his attention to the other car, which was stopped now, a lone trooper climbing out from behind the wheel, a shotgun in his left hand, a radio in his right, his Stetson jammed on all wrong and a wide-eyed holy shit expression on his round white face.
The kid turned and scooted around to the defilade side of the unit, out of Coker’s direct line of fire, trying to put as much heavy metal between himself and whatever was shooting at him as he could.
Coker let him get set, even let him get off a round, just to make sure he knew where the center of his mass would be, and then he put his fifth round straight through the entire width of the car and blew the kid into bloody chunks.
The trooper’s shotgun clattered backwards.
And the quiet came down.
A moment of pressurized silence, Coker’s heart thudding in his ribs. And then he got up, shook his head to clear the ringing, and looked around him as if seeing the place for the first time.
The stillness was unsettling and in spite of the ear protection his hearing was vague and muffled, as if the world were wrapped in a bubble. His shoulder throbbed from the kick of the Barrett.
On the far side of the road a small forest fire had broken out and a pillar of white smoke was rising up into the sky.
The cottonwood smoke smelled nice, tangy and biting. Reminded him of Christmas back in Billings. Happy times. Coker breathed it in for a while, feeling the world come slowly back to normal.
He turned on the scanner and listened to the cross talk for a moment. All he heard was panic. Nobody knew what the hell had just happened and everybody was telling everybody else what to do about it at the top of their lungs.
He figured he had time for a quick cleanup.
Just to be on the safe side, he removed the empty box mag, slammed a new one home, released the bolt to chamber a round, flicked the safety to horizontal, and shouldered the rifle, all twenty pounds of it, on a patrol sling, where he could swing it around and bring it to bear if he had to.
He pulled out a Colt Python and walked down the road to the squad cars and put a big soft-nosed .357 round into every intact skull he could find, reloaded, and did what he could with whatever was left of whoever was left.
Then he extracted, with some difficulty because of the latex gloves he was wearing and the bits of tissue and blood and bone all over the interior, all the hard disks from the various dashboard cameras. That done, he stepped backwards out of the area, looking to see if he was leaving bloody boot tracks at the crime scene.
Coker went back and policed his shooting position, gathered up his five spent casings, kicked away his boot marks and scuff traces, double-checked the area once more,
Coker’s third round took Billy Goodhew’s head and upper body off and spattered it all over the prisoner partition behind him. It also took out the rear window and, in one of those weird accidents that happen in firefights, sent a glittering sun-drenched sheet of the deputy’s arterial blood and brain tissue across the windshield of the patrol unit on his tail.
Both state cars broke hard, tires smoking, grilles dipping down, cutting left and right, coming to a tail-to-tail blocking position, overlapped, trying to establish a defensive stand.
Coker put his fourth round into the driver’s side of the windshield on the left-hand car, saw the roof stipple with fragments and the shattered window cover itself with a sheet of black blood. Nobody popped out of the passenger door, so Coker figured the driver was alone.
Poor bastard.
Thanks to the recession, most of the state and county guys had been cut back to singles, even at night. It was a goddam disgrace. Fucking bean counters down in Cap City. They’d never have to make a DUI stop at two in the morning, all alone out on a deserted highway, pulling over some overloaded black Escalade with tinted windows and God-only-knows-what waiting inside it.
Coker turned his attention to the other car, which was stopped now, a lone trooper climbing out from behind the wheel, a shotgun in his left hand, a radio in his right, his Stetson jammed on all wrong and a wide-eyed holy shit expression on his round white face.
The kid turned and scooted around to the defilade side of the unit, out of Coker’s direct line of fire, trying to put as much heavy metal between himself and whatever was shooting at him as he could.
Coker let him get set, even let him get off a round, just to make sure he knew where the center of his mass would be, and then he put his fifth round straight through the entire width of the car and blew the kid into bloody chunks.
The trooper’s shotgun clattered backwards.
And the quiet came down.
A moment of pressurized silence, Coker’s heart thudding in his ribs. And then he got up, shook his head to clear the ringing, and looked around him as if seeing the place for the first time.
The stillness was unsettling and in spite of the ear protection his hearing was vague and muffled, as if the world were wrapped in a bubble. His shoulder throbbed from the kick of the Barrett.
On the far side of the road a small forest fire had broken out and a pillar of white smoke was rising up into the sky.
The cottonwood smoke smelled nice, tangy and biting. Reminded him of Christmas back in Billings. Happy times. Coker breathed it in for a while, feeling the world come slowly back to normal.
He turned on the scanner and listened to the cross talk for a moment. All he heard was panic. Nobody knew what the hell had just happened and everybody was telling everybody else what to do about it at the top of their lungs.
He figured he had time for a quick cleanup.
Just to be on the safe side, he removed the empty box mag, slammed a new one home, released the bolt to chamber a round, flicked the safety to horizontal, and shouldered the rifle, all twenty pounds of it, on a patrol sling, where he could swing it around and bring it to bear if he had to.
He pulled out a Colt Python and walked down the road to the squad cars and put a big soft-nosed .357 round into every intact skull he could find, reloaded, and did what he could with whatever was left of whoever was left.
Then he extracted, with some difficulty because of the latex gloves he was wearing and the bits of tissue and blood and bone all over the interior, all the hard disks from the various dashboard cameras. That done, he stepped backwards out of the area, looking to see if he was leaving bloody boot tracks at the crime scene.
Coker went back and policed his shooting position, gathered up his five spent casings, kicked away his boot marks and scuff traces, double-checked the area once more,
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