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“I do.”
“He has a rifle on him with a range of almost four hundred metres. I lent it to him. He’s a good shot, too.”
“Well,” said Hazel, pulling the car onto the verge, “I’d better avoid him, then. Your commanding officer’s cruiser has got quite a bit of horsepower.” She drove far out into the field, beyond range, she thought, and then cut back in. She kept a wide berth behind the Mercedes as she drove back toward the road, through the vibrant soy.
Gunfire erupted from the passenger window of the Mercedes as she bored down on the road and pulled LeJeune’s cruiser back sharply onto the hardtop. The cruiser hit the road with a jerk and a heave and fishtailed around a little, or appeared to fishtail – the fact was, Hazel was now pointing south on purpose. She was a hundred and fifty metres above the black Mercedes. The driver was no longer visible in the front of it. Protecting his head from a shot. “Last chance to catch a lift with me,” she said into the radio.
“You put too low a value on life,” came Bellecourt’s voice.
“I have a sliding scale,” said Hazel, and she put the car in first and floored it. That’s when her hunch was confirmed and she saw Bellecourt pop upright in the front seat of the Mercedes. Yes, my dear, she thought. She remembered the Mercedes’s driver had had long black hair, and she knew from Forbes’s report that Tate was bald. She was already going forty kilometres an hour when Bellecourt began to hurriedly back the Mercedes up. She wasn’t talking now, was she? Hazel closed the distance between the two cars, angling the cruiser to make contact with the front side of the Mercedes – fifty, sixty kilometres an hour, and she could see the determination on Bellecourt’s face. She was retreating as fast as she could, dust kicking forward from her front tires, and Hazel had the whole front right panel in her sights. She collided hard against the black car and she saw Bellecourt’s body leap up and toward her, but then the world went white and something punched her with incredible force. It took a moment to realize that the impact had triggered the airbag in LeJeune’s steering wheel, and even as Hazel punched it down and coughed out a lungful of the white powder that now filled the car, she could see the Mercedes rolling slowly away toward the ditch, smoke and steam flowing upwards into the summer air, its rear facing Hazel. The pain in her neck told her she was going to be popping anti-inflammatories later, but job one was getting out of the car. She pushed herself out of LeJeune’s cruiser and drew her weapon. There was no movement inside the black car, and the spent bladders of three airbags were hanging from its dashboard and doors. Hazel moved carefully around the back. The driver’s door was still closed. She wrenched it open and found Bellecourt lying awkwardly against the passenger seat, blood dripping from the side of her head. She had something in her hand – the radio. Bellecourt’s standard-issue Glock was sitting on the floor below the passnger seat. “Do it,” Bellecourt said into it the radio and dropped it. She lifted her head to Hazel and gave her a small, pained smile.
“Boom,” she said.
The fields behind them jumped and Hazel landed on her hip three feet from the car, skidding.
She shot to her feet and looked out to where the dust was settling within the soy. Something had been detonated, but there had been no sound, only the sensation of the earth bucking and all the air in the county rushing past her. She forced herself to focus on her prisoner: the constable was struggling to get herself upright in the front seat, and Hazel leapt out with her empty hands – the gun had gone flying – and wrapped them around Bellecourt’s head to pull her out and to the ground. The constable was bleeding freely from the temple. The look in her eyes suggested Hazel had plenty of time to retrieve her gun. She grabbed it and then stood over Bellecourt, peering down the barrel at her.
“Didn’t you wonder where Earl Tate really was?” Bellecourt asked her.
“Aren’t you wondering if you’re going to die today?” Hazel replied.
“I don’t worry about that anymore.”
“You should,” said Hazel. She leaned over, her back protesting, and grabbed the constable by the front of her uniform and yanked her off the flattop into the base of her kneecap. Bellecourt’s nose exploded against the bone and a jet of blood described the arc of her head as Hazel dropped her back to the pavement. “But I can hurt you. A lot.”
Bellecourt smiled at her.
“What have you done to Wingate?”
“He’s with the virgins now.”
Hazel dropped the gun now and fell to her knees, straddling Bellecourt around the waist and trapping her arms. “Whatever they do to you in a court of law isn’t going to be enough,” she said.
Bellecourt spat blood at Hazel, laughing. “All you can do to me is shake a finger. The law is nothing, not compared to other laws.”
“You’re right about the law we both supposedly serve.” She suddenly punched Bellecourt in the mouth, splitting both lips. “It lacks certain elegance.” She punched her again, and again. Bellecourt, with her arms pi
“You know … fuck all,” Bellecourt rasped.
“175 Highland Crescent on Ga
She leaned over to retrieve Bellecourt’s gun. She tossed it out the window and onto the road. “Let’s go find your man,” she said. Then she dragged Bellecourt back to her Mercedes and shoved her into the passenger seat. The cruiser was toast.
] 33 [
Star was asleep under Wingate’s jacket, a thin windbreaker he’d decided to wear, recalling the cool of the tu
His eyes had adjusted and it was like dusk in the underground pit. Looking up through the pipe, he saw daylight hovering high above him. Thin filaments moved back and forth over the mouth of the pipe twenty-five or so feet above his head and he realized they were leaves and stems of the soy plants in the field above. In the tomblike room, everything had a greyish hue, but he could make out details in the wall, on the ground, and he could see Cherry’s expression. The muscles in her face were slack, but she was alert and alive. He felt a bond to this woman, whose real name he finally knew: Katrina Volkov. From Elizavetgrad.
“I am worry for Stoya,” she said, using Star’s real name. “She is smaller.”
“I’m going to get you both out of here alive,” said Wingate. “You’re going to go home.”
“In a box,” she said. “Silly to take us out of one grave and put us in another.”
“My people know where we are and they’re coming. All you and Stoya have to do is not panic.” But she knew what he knew: the room was inescapable. The door set in concrete was four inches thick and had to weigh half a ton. The room itself had been excavated from within and the structural integrity of the earth on all sides and above and below made it almost as hard as brick. The seams of the room – its edges and corners – were slightly loose from being disturbed, but there was no chance anyone could dig their way out of here. He’d already tested the wall at various points with his fingers and only where three seams met was there any give at all. These were the eight sort-of corners: four rounded ones on the ceiling and four on the floor. It was overall hopeless.