“There always are choices,” Ranger said, laying the barrel of his .44 magnum alongside Mo's head.
Mo rolled his eyes to look at Ranger. “Where'd you come from? I didn't hear you come in!”
“I come in like the fog on little cat feet.”
I looked at Ranger. “Very nice.”
“Carl Sandburg,” Ranger said. “More or less.”
Gravel crunched under tire treads outside, and Mo jumped beside me. “It's him!”
I pulled the shade and looked out. “It's not Reverend Bill.”
Ranger and Mo raised their eyebrows at me in silent question.
“You're not going to believe this,” I said.
I answered the knock at the door and revealed Lula standing on the stoop, beaming, looking pleased.
“Hey girlfriend,” she said. “Vinnie told me all about this hideaway house, and I came out to give you a hand.”
Mo's voice cracked. “It's the lunatic in the red Firebird!”
“Hunh,” Lula said.
I got Mo's jacket from the hall closet and bundled him into it, at the same time checking him for weapons. I ushered him out the front door and was standing with him on the stoop when I caught the far-off sound of a car on the road. We all paused. The car drew closer. We caught a flash of blue through the trees, and then the vehicle turned into the drive. It was a Ford Econoline van with FREEDOM CHURCH lettered on the side. It stopped halfway to the house, its forward progress halted by Lula's Firebird. The side door to the van slid open and a man in mask and coveralls got out. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he hefted a rocket launcher to his shoulder. There was a flash of fire and a pfnufff! And my truck blew up, its doors shooting off into space like Frisbees.
“That's a warning shot,” the man yelled. “We want Mo.”
I was speechless. They'd blown up my truck! They'd turned it into a big yellow fireball.
“Look on the bright side,” Lula said to me. “You're not going to have to worry about that puppy stalling no more.”
“It was fixed!”
Two more men got out of the van. They sighted assault rifles, and we all stumbled back into the house and slammed the door shut.
“If they can blow up a truck, they can blow up a house,” Ranger said, pulling car keys from his pocket, handing them to me. “Take Mo out the back door while I pin these guys down. Cut through the woods to my Bronco and get the hell out of here.”
“What about you? I'm not going to leave you here!”
The house was peppered with gunshot, and we all hit the deck.
Ranger knocked out window glass and opened fire. “I'll be fine. I'll give you a good start, and then I'll lose myself in the woods.” He glanced over at me. “I've done this before.”
I grabbed Mo and shoved him toward the back door. Lula ran after us. All of us scuttled in a crouch across the small backyard to the woods while gunfire once again erupted from the driveway. Mo was struggling to run, and Lula was shouting, “Oh shit! Oh shit!”
We slid on our asses down a small embankment, scrambled to our feet and kept going, crashing through dry, viny undergrowth. Not what you'd call a quiet retreat, but quiet didn't matter with World War III going on behind us.
When I thought we'd gone far enough I began curving back toward the road. There was another explosion, and I turned to see a fireball rise to the sky.
“Has to be the bungalow,” Lula said.
Her tone was somber. Ominous. Both of us thinking of Ranger.
Mo went down to his knees, his face chalk white, his hand holding his side where a dark stain had begun to spread on his gray coat. A drop of blood hit dry leaves.
“He must have caught one in the house,” Lula said.