Perilous (24 page)

“Get out of the car! Keep your hands up!” I shouted.

I advanced on the car, a newer white Mercedes. I aimed the barrel of the shotgun directly at the driver’s window. The moon lit up the exterior of the car, but through the tinted windows, I couldn’t see the driver.

“Put it in park! Shut it off and get out!”

The door didn’t open. He didn’t put it into park. The rear wheels of the Mercedes spun backward and caught, and the front of the sedan spun toward us. I heard the transmission click. The headlights of the car shone on us. “Dad, get off to the side.”

He kept the rifle aimed at the car and took a few steps sideways to the closest pier. He stepped onto it and retook his firing stance. The car’s motor revved.

“Don’t do it!” I yelled. I kept the shotgun aimed at the windshield.

The motor revved again. The tires spun on the ice then grabbed, and the Mercedes lunged toward me. I fired at the car, pumped, and repeated. All four shots hit the hood and windshield of the car. The Mercedes didn’t slow. My father fired four times at it from the side. The passenger side windows shattered. The Mercedes was ten feet from me. I pumped, fired, and dove to the right, out of its path. The car passed just as I hit the ice belly first. The car’s brakes locked, and it spun around on the ice, the headlights shining back on me from fifty yards away. My father fired at least ten shots from the pier at the car, the bullets thumping into the vehicle. Two rounds went through the windshield on the driver’s side.

The engine revved again.

I got my feet underneath myself again and brought the butt of the shotgun back into my shoulder.

The rear tires spun, and the car lurched forward. He was coming for another attempt to run me down. The car picked up speed. I readied myself to fire and dive again. At twenty yards away and almost twenty miles an hour, the nose of the Mercedes veered left toward my dad on the pier.

“Dad, get out of there!” I shouted.

He didn’t.

He stood with the rifle aimed at the windshield and fired continuously. The Mercedes headed straight for him. I fired three shots into the side of the car as I ran toward it. The car didn’t slow or veer off its course.

“Run!” I yelled.

My father didn’t budge. He kept firing into the front of the car.

The car exploded through the end of the pier. The sounds of screeching metal, broken wood, and crunching ice filled the air. Snow and wood splinters flew and slid across the surface of the ice. My father disappeared from view as the Mercedes ripped through. The car slid to a stop as the nose hit shore. I couldn’t see my father anywhere.

“Dad!” I yelled.

I ran toward the car. The driver’s door flew open, and I saw a man in a white ghillie suit step from the car. He turned toward me. I stopped and held the shotgun on him. “Face down!”

He swung a pistol from his hip. I fired the last round in the shotgun, and the chest of his white suit went red. He fell back into the door of the car and collapsed to the ground. I rushed to where I’d last seen my father.

Among the broken wood, I found him lying five feet from the shoreline. I ran to him and swatted the wood debris away from his side. The rifle lay next to him. His eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I jammed my fingers under his jaw to check for a pulse.

“Come on, old man.” I shook him by his chin.

He let out a moan and rolled onto his side. “Is he dead?” he asked.

“Yeah, are you all right?”

He squinted his eyes and clenched his teeth. “I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”

“Nothing is broken?” I tried checking him out, but he swatted at my hands.

“I’m fine. This wasn’t how I planned to spend my weekend, Carl.” He grunted in pain and slid himself into a seated position next to me. “Where is he?”

I didn’t take my eyes off my father. “In the doorway of the car. Are you sure you’re all right?”

My father looked toward the car and then lunged on top of me. I heard two shots and felt my father’s body jerk above me. He let out a yelp.

“Take the rifle,” my father said.

I glanced to my left. The man stood, using the door to prop himself up against the Mercedes. My head went right, and I saw the rifle my father had used. I pawed at my father, trying to get his two-hundred-plus-pound body off of me before the guy could get off another shot. My father rolled to the ice and yelped in pain again. A shot rang, and the bullet passed over us by inches and hit the frozen surface of the lake five feet away. I rolled toward the rifle. The gunman fired again, the bullet entering the ice inches from my face, sending pieces into my eyes. The cold metal of the AR-15 touched my hand. I scooped it from the ice, rolled onto my back, and used my feet to kick my body toward the shooter. I brought the gun to my shoulder. My eyes met the shooter’s, and I sat up.

He fired twice, the impact of the rounds hitting me in the chest both times.

“Carl!” my father yelled.

The air left my lungs. It felt as if someone had hit me with a bat. The momentum of the rounds pushed my torso back and with it, the aim I had on the man. I glanced down. I saw two holes in the center of my jacket and struggled to get a breath.

I brought the sights back on him and fired. His head snapped back, and he fell. I pulled myself to my feet and glanced at my father. He sat up in the snow-caked ice, looking over at me. I ran to disarm the man. When I approached him, I realized that wouldn’t be necessary. He lay in a pool of blood at the side of his car, facing up. The bullet had entered just under his right eye and appeared to have exited out the back of his head, from the amount of blood I saw.

I went to my father’s side. He sat on the ice. Blood surrounded him.

“Dad, where did you get hit?” I asked.

He didn’t speak.

“What the hell were you doing diving on me?”

“Protecting my son.”

“I have on a vest.”

He winced in pain. “That would have been good information to have.”

“Where are you hit? How bad? Let me see.”

“Son of a bitch!” he said. He shook his head.

“Dad, where are you hit? We need to get pressure on it until help arrives.”

“I am putting pressure on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“That son of a bitch shot me in the ass! Twice! Once in each cheek!”

I saw red-and-blues lighting the woods back up by the property.

“Just hang tight, Dad. We have help coming.”

I stood on the ice near the back of the ambulance with Sandy and my sister. They’d made a call to 9-1-1 a mile from the property and waited for the sheriffs.

The EMTs had my father face down on a gurney. He was mumbling profanities. They rolled him toward the back door of the ambulance as Sandy and I walked alongside.

“They say you’ll be fine, Dad,” I said.

He mumbled more profanities.

I looked to one of the EMTs. “What hospital?”

“Antigo.”

“And what are we looking at here?”

“His shoulder will just need to be stitched up. As far as his nether regions, through and through on both. One caught a little more meat than the other.”

My father turned and eyeballed the EMT I was speaking with. “Did you really need to cut off my pants and leave me all ‘ass out in the wind’?”

I smirked.

“It was necessary, sir,” the EMT said.

“This is humiliating,” my father said.

I put my face down to his ear so Sandy wouldn’t hear me. “There’s nothing humiliating about what you did. I’m not happy that you risked your own life to do it, but I love you.”

He reached out and pulled me closer by the back of my head. “I’d do it again in a second, boy.” He shot me a half smile. “Not a word of this to Sandy.”

“Okay,” I said.

My father pointed inside the ambulance. “Take me away, guys.”

They loaded my father. Sandy put her foot up on the back to step in.

“Sandy, where are the keys to your truck?” I asked.

“Jeff has them,” she said.

“Okay. I’m guessing these guys want me to stick around and go over everything with them. I’ll send Jeff, Tommy, and the girls to meet you at the hospital. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

“How are you going to get there?”

“I’ll hitch a ride with one of the sheriffs.”

“Okay, Carl,” Sandy said.

She stepped inside, and they closed the doors. The ambulance’s lights flipped on as it crept across the ice to the frozen boat ramp. It made a left and disappeared from view.

Three sheriff’s cruisers sat around the Mercedes. Because their radios wouldn’t respond when they’d arrived, they searched the Mercedes and found the cell-phone jammer on in the back of the car. That explained why we couldn’t get a signal and why Benson’s radio wouldn’t go through. The sheriffs looked to be going over the inventory of weapons in the vehicle. With the number of guns lined up on the side of the car, as well as handguns on the roof, the guy had a small arsenal. The body of the deceased gunman lay at the driver’s door. I walked over to Callie and my sister, standing at the shoreline.

Callie put her arms around me. “You’re okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine, babe.”

She looked up at me, her face filled with worry. She spoke softly. “What if this isn’t it? What are we going to do?”

I let out a breath. “I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.”

“Are we never going to be safe?”

I said nothing.

She buried her head against my chest.

“You guys can probably head out,” I said. “I’ll meet you over there as soon as I can.”

Callie nodded.

“Mel, Sandy said Jeff has the keys. Why don’t you guys head over to be with her and Dad. I’ll grab a ride with one of the sheriffs as soon as I’m done here.”

“Yeah,” she said.

I gave Callie a kiss and squeezed her tight. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Okay,” she said.

Melissa and Callie trudged up the snow-covered hill, back toward the cabin. I walked toward the sheriffs at the car.

One of the deputies came over as I approached. His name plate read Lasowski. “It’s Kane, right?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Law enforcement?”

“Lieutenant, Tampa homicide. I believe this is all blowback from a case I worked.”

“Followed you all the way to northern Wisconsin from Florida?” he asked.

“Looks like it. I’m working with the feds on this. Plus, I have a team from my precinct that will need any information gathered. That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

“No. We’ll share whatever we need to.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Do you want to give me a quick run-through on what happened down here?” He twirled his finger in the air.

“Sure.”

“We’ll get everything that took place down here. Then we’ll head back up top, and you can go over everything that transpired up there. We’ll need to go back to the station after that and then get this all written up. I’m sure you want to be with your father, so we’ll try to get it all taken care of as quick as we can.”

“That’s fine, and thanks.”

We started. He made me run through everything backward, a common tactic to weed out any lies. People have a hard time recounting things that are untruthful when they have to start from the finish. I understood—he was just doing his job. I went over the details with the deputy—shooting the man, him shooting my father, the gunman trying to run my father and me over, me firing at the car with the deputy’s shotgun, everything. We finished on the ice and headed back up the hill toward the cabin.

“Where is the body going to go?” I asked.

“The Langlade County coroner’s office. The guy’s checked him and the car for any kind of ID. There was nothing.”

“I’ll need that guy’s prints forwarded to my friend at the FBI. I’m sure any identification you’d find on him would be phony anyway.”

“I’ll put you in contact with our coroner. He should be able to coordinate with your feds.”

“Thanks.”

We neared the top of the hill, and I could see the cabin. An ambulance and more sheriff’s cruisers littered the driveway.

“Where is the Mercedes going?”

“To our county impound lot. We’ll probably need to take that truck there too.” He motioned at my father’s pickup, filled with bullet holes. “We’ll need ballistics information.”

“Can I get the contact information from whoever is going to go over the Mercedes? I’d like the prints and any information found from that to be forwarded to my team.”

“I’m guessing that it will probably be Jerry McCown. He should be at the station before you leave. I’ll get you a face to face with him.”

“Thanks.”

We walked past my father’s truck and the sheriff’s bullet-ridden cruiser. A second ambulance had its back doors open near the front of the cabin. I saw the EMTs loading Benson into the back. He was sitting up, facing me. He gave me a salute as they pushed the gurney up into the ambulance.

I tossed him a wave back. “Deputy Lasowski, mind if I get a quick word with Benson before they take off with him?”

“Not at all.” He motioned for me to go over.

I walked to the back doors of the ambulance. Lasowski stood to my side.

“I should be back on my feet in a couple days,” Benson said.

“That’s good news. I just wanted to say thanks for keeping an eye on my family.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Sorry things went down the way they did.”

“The good guys are all okay—the bad guy is dead. Thanks for dragging me out of that cruiser and you guys getting me inside to safety.”

I nodded and looked to his attending EMT. “You’re going to the hospital in Antigo, I assume?”

“We are.”

“Benson, I’ll stop in to check on you.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Are you guys set?” The EMT asked. “We need to take off.”

I slapped the back door of the ambulance. “We’re set.”

He pulled the rear door closed, and the ambulance drove from the driveway.

I spent the next hour going over the gunfight from the time it began until the point where my father and I went after the man down on the lake. Lasowski said he had everything he needed. He informed me that we’d be leaving within the hour after he wrapped a few things up. I used the time to search the shed for a couple pieces of plywood, some nails, and a hammer. The scraps of wood I found were large enough to hammer up over the three window voids. That would do until I came back with someone to replace the glass.