“You put my name on the state ledger,” Wade said. It wasn't a question.
“Wade, listen to me—” Hoyt started, beginning to rise from my back, his gun wavering for a fraction of an inch as he tried to keep his brother in his peripheral vision.
That half-inch of clearance was all I needed.
I drove my right elbow upward with everything I had left, catching Hoyt in the floating ribs beneath his gun arm. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs in a wet gasp, throwing his balance off across the diesel-slick floor. As he stumbled sideways, I rolled onto my left hip, brought both cuffed hands over my head, and slammed the heavy forged-steel chain across his right wrist.
The Glock fired with an ear-splitting crack.
The nine-millimeter slug struck the reinforced concrete floor three inches from my boot, ricocheting off the masonry and punching a neat, spider-webbed crater into the sally port’s painted wall. Hoyt screamed, dropping the weapon as the heavy chain crushed the tendons in his shooting hand. The gun skittered across the floor, spinning through the oil until it struck the rear tire of the idling van.
Wade didn't move to pick it up. He backed against the white panel of his truck, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes fixed on his brother with pure disgust.
Hoyt lunged for the weapon on his knees, his heavy frame scrambling across the grit, but I was already on my feet. Moving with the short, choppy strides the ankle chain allowed, I kicked the pistol under the transmission housing of the van, well out of reach, and planted my shoulder against the concrete frame of the safety booth.
“Ellis! ” I slammed my cuffed fists against the glass, leaving a streak of Hoyt’s sweat and my own blood on the green laminate. “The desk phone! Pick up the landline! ”
Inside the booth, Ellis had already moved. The terror was gone from his eyes, replaced by the grim, mechanical efficiency of a man who realized that his only chance of surviving the sunrise was making sure the truth left Mercer County before Hoyt could reach a light switch.
He didn't pick up the county intercom. He grabbed the heavy black receiver of the hard-wired BellSouth trunk line—the emergency carrier line that bypassed the county’s digital PBX and routed directly into the state emergency operations center in Atlanta.
“What are you doing, Ellis? ” Hoyt roared, dragging himself upright against the van’s front fender, clutching his broken wrist against his ribs. “Hang that phone up! That’s an order from your commanding officer! ”
“Deputy Ellis, Badge four-one-four,” the kid spoke into the heavy plastic mouthpiece, his voice broadcasting clearly through the external intercom. He wasn't yelling anymore. He was reading with the cold, deliberate cadence of a sworn officer entering an active crime scene into the permanent record. “I am requesting an immediate mutual-aid interdiction at the Mercer County substation sally port. We have an officer-involved breach and an armed hostage situation in progress. ”
“Ellis, you son of a bitch! ” Hoyt lunged toward the glass, hammering his left fist against the pane, but the bulletproof glass didn't even shudder under the blow.
“I have two subjects detained in the vehicle bay,” Ellis continued, keeping his back pressed against the secure wall as he stared down his sergeant. “Subject one is Sergeant Raymond Hoyt. Subject two is Wade Hoyt of Blackwood Scrap. I have secured documentary evidence substantiating grand larceny, official corruption, and the attempted unlawful execution of an active federal agent. ”
Ellis paused, his eyes dropping to the red manifest binder on the desk.
“Be advised,” Ellis said, each syllable ringing like an iron bell through the concrete bay. “The federal agent is Special Agent Mark Brennan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta Field Office. He is currently wearing an intake bracelet issued under the name of Deputy Thomas Vance, file number zero-nine-four-one-one-two. Advise the Georgia State Patrol and the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General that the Vance homicide file has been located. The perpetrators are inside the building. ”
Hoyt’s fist stopped against the glass. He let his arm drop slowly to his side, his breath rattling in his throat like loose pebbles.
Above our heads, high on the northern wall where the heavy steel ventilation louvers met the ceiling, the pneumatic hiss of the secondary air line died away. Then came a new sound—faint at first, but rising steadily over the wet pine woods outside the concrete bunker.
It wasn't the distant rumble of the timber mill, and it wasn't the chugging idle of Wade’s scrap truck.
It was the high-low wail of three separate sirens, running hard and fast down Highway 84 from the Georgia State Patrol barracks in Waycross.
I leaned back against the cinder-block wall, the cold stone pressing into my bruised shoulder blades. My hands were still chained in front of me, the steel cutting into my skin, and the carbon tow slip was still wet with sweat inside the gusset of my right boot. But for the first time in four hours, the room didn't belong to the sergeant with the gold badge and the dead man’s jacket.