Out of Sight / Вне поля зрения. Элмор Леонард
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parking lot shining on the fence, a dark-blue car and a white one behind it that had to be Buddy. Foley on his toes[82] now looking at freedom, feeling it as the Pup was identifying himself, saying this was Officer Pupko and where he was, sending out the word too soon, before Foley was ready. He saw a figure by the fence now, as Pup was yelling into his radio, “I’m looking at him, for Christ sake!”
Foley took a moment to remind himself not to hold back. Hold back, you make a mess. He got the angle he wanted, stepped in and laid the two-by-four smack against the side of Pup’s head.
Dropped him clean[83] with the one swing, without a sound coming from him.
Foley took another look outside, saw two figures now by the fence, before he stooped down to get Pup undressed. Undo his shirt buttons and then roll him face down, the Pup alive but dead weight[84]. Man, it was work getting the shirt off, Pup not helping any. Foley quick put it on over his T-shirt. He heard a car horn blowing now, maybe Buddy trying to tell him something. Like come on, move. He saw he wouldn’t have time for the pants; he hoped his prison blue wouldn’t be noticed in the dark. Foley pulled Pup’s cap, too small for him, tight over his eyes, picked up the flashlight and slipped out the front door into the bushes.
Karen had the court papers in her hand, ready to get out of the car.
She saw prisoners still coming in from the athletic field, passing left to right in her view, all of them some distance from the fence. She opened the car door…
Wait a minute.
One of the guys, a figure she hadn’t noticed before this moment, was right by the fence. Close enough to touch it. The guy crouched… or on his hands and knees. Karen popped on her headlights again and saw him clearly.
Not crouched.
The guy was coming out of the ground.
On this side of the fence.
Another one came out of the ground.
Right in front of her. Not yards from the car. Two guys breaking out and no siren or whistle going off, prisoners still crossing the compound, not even aware…
Karen pushed the horn, held it down and saw the two guys by the fence, both Latins, looking into her headlights, stopped there for a moment before taking off in the dark. By the time the third one appeared, came out of the hole followed by another convict on his heels, Karen was out of the car.
Buddy didn’t see them right away. The woman began blowing her horn and that got him sitting up. He still didn’t realize the break was on until the woman was out of the car. By the time he saw the two cons they were running away from the fence, cutting across the road, the guard in the far tower trying to gun them down as they ran for an orange grove and disappeared from sight.
When Buddy looked for the woman again she was right in front of him – her blond hair in his headlights, long slim legs, hell, a girl – at the trunk of her car raising the lid.
Buddy’s first thought, She’s gonna put a con in there, help him escape.
He watched her duck her head in the trunk and come out with a pistol, what looked like some kind of automatic.
But then she threw the pistol in the trunk, ducked in there again and came out this time with a pump-action shotgun.
Buddy watched her hurry to the front of her car and raise the shotgun, but the two cons were gone. Now a whistle was blowing inside the compound.
Buddy saw convicts in there gathering, looking this way, hundreds of them bunched in groups, but no hacks in sight. He told himself he’d better get out of the car, be ready.
Once he was out he saw the girl, still by the front of her car, had the shotgun on two more cons, both filthy dirty, standing by the hole they must’ve come out of, the girl telling them to get their hands in the air. She wasn’t here to help anybody escape. So who was she? Buddy could see the two cons making up their minds, couple of Latinos, already. They took off toward the road. Buddy saw the woman, this good-looking girl in a short skirt, put her pump gun on them and knew she couldn’t miss, but she didn’t fire. No, the hacks coming from the main gate, five of them with rifles and shotguns, opened up all at once and kept firing and Buddy saw the two convicts cut down as they ran.
The hacks were looking this way now; they couldn’t miss seeing the girl standing there in her headlights, but they didn’t bother with her – Buddy realizing they knew who she was. They were more interested in the hole the convicts had come out of. Now they were standing by it peering in, coming closer with their weapons ready, then all stepped back at once, bumping into each other.
A head appeared wearing a guard’s baseball cap, head and shoulders now coming out of the hole, the guy saying something to them, his face beneath the cap smeared with muck, shaking his head now, excited. One of the hacks was speaking into his radio. Another extended his rifle for the one in the hole to grab the barrel and get pulled out. But the one in the hole kept yelling and pointing out at the dark, toward the orange grove. Finally when the hacks moved off they checked the two convicts they’d shot, kicked at them to see if they were still alive and then kept going, and the one in the hole climbed out.
Buddy knew it was Foley, taking his time now to put on a show[85], standing with his hands on his hips like an honest-to– God hack, the cap down on his eyes. Buddy, raising his arm and waving at Foley to come on, saw the girl turn enough to put the shotgun on him. He raised the palm of his hand to her saying, “It’s okay, honey, we’re good guys.”
She said, “What’re you doing here?” Not so much asking, already pretty sure of what they were doing. She glanced around to include Foley. She knew, all right, that with the two of them to watch it was too late making her move. She saw Foley coming at her filthy dirty, giving Buddy time to take her around the neck. She fought him, jabbing him in the gut with the butt end of the shotgun, before Foley got in there to wrench it from her grip[86]. They dragged her to the rear end of the Chevy, the trunk lid still up, and crouched there as some hacks came running along the fence past the dark gun tower and crossed the road toward the orange grove. Pretty soon they heard bursts of gunfire, then silence.
Foley said, “I bet that’s all the hacks they send out. Otherwise nobody’s left to mind the store.”[87]
Buddy said, “Why don’t we talk about it later.”
He turned his head to see Foley and the young woman staring at each other in the Cadillac headlights, Foley saying to her, “Why you’re just a girl. What do you do for a living you pack a shotgun[88]?”
She said to him, “I’m a federal marshal and you’re under arrest, both of you guys.”
Foley kept staring like he was giving the situation serious thought, deciding now what to do with her, Jesus, a U.S. marshal. But what he said was, “I bet I smell, don’t I?” And then he said, “Listen, you hop in the trunk and we’ll get out of here.”
Chapter Five
Karen thought they’d put her inside and leave and she felt around to find her handgun, the Sig Sauer, before they closed the trunk lid and she’d have to kick at it and yell until someone let her out.
There, she felt the holster, took the pistol out and closed her hand around grip ready to come around shooting if she had to. But now the one in the filthy guard uniform pushed her and was getting in with her bringing his arm around now to hold her to him, and she didn’t have room to turn and stick the gun in his face.
The trunk lid came down and they were in darkness, dead silent until the engine came to life, the car moving now, turning to the road that went out to the highway. Karen pictured it, remembering the orange grove, then farther along the road frame houses and yards where some of the prison personnel lived.
His voice in the dark,
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