The Kill Read Free

worker who normally mans the sign didn’t show up today so this kid’s filling in. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”
    The two cars rolled by and he patted Smitty’s door. “Okay, you’re good to go.”
    “Have yourself a good one,” Smitty said, raising the window. Loose bits of fresh asphalt pinged beneath the truck as he eased through the work area. On the other side, he waved at a second flagman and punched the accelerator. He was no longer tardy now, he was downright late.
    He rounded the bend just before the entrance to Longmeadow and sped past a rusted blue sedan parked on the shoulder with a white rag hanging off its gas cap. As he cleared the gates to the racecourse and began to bounce along the gravel road, someone tooted a horn behind him. Smitty shot a glance at the rearview mirror and saw Thompson James’s Ford Explorer. He braked to a stop and lowered his window as Thompson swerved onto the grass and pulled even with him.
    “Morning, Thompson. Glad to see you made it. Margaret told me you weren’t going to be able to join the work party today.”
    “I wasn’t. I was on my way to the office when I got an emergency dispatch for this location, so I turned around.”
    In addition to being treasurer of the hunt, Thompson was a member of the volunteer rescue squad. Smitty saw the whirl of flashing blue lights on the windshield of the SUV. He frowned. “Here? What’s the emergency?”
    “There’s a gunshot victim. That’s all I know from the dispatch.” Thompson jerked his head toward the rise to his left. “In the stewards’ stand.”
    “Good God almighty.”

CHAPTER
5

    A bigale was photographing troops near the encampment when an incoming artillery shell shrieked through the afternoon sky. Before she could dive for cover, the shell blasted into the ridge to her right. The concussion slammed her to the ground. She hugged the craggy terrain for a moment, unsure whether another round from the Taliban would follow, then gingerly pushed herself up and checked to make sure she wasn’t bleeding. Her body ached as if she’d been sucker-punched by a giant fist, but nothing seemed broken. She searched for Joe, saw him writhing on the ground twenty feet away, clutching his calf through blood-soaked khakis. She scrambled over, reaching him just as a medic did.
    The medic peeled back Joe’s pant leg. “You’ve got a shrapnel wound!” He shouted to be heard as the Allied troops fired back with their own artillery.
    “Bloody hell!” Joe screamed. “It feels like it blew off half my fucking leg.”
    “You’ll be okay,” the medic said.
    Someone yelled for the medic, pointing to a soldier who was down.
    “Go on. That soldier looks worse off. I can bandage his leg,” Abigale said.
    “Thanks.” The medic threw a handful of supplies at her. “I’ll send someone over to help move him.”
    Joe moaned as Abigale pressed a wad of surgical pads to the angry wound. His bearded face twisted into a grimace, narrow lips stretched tight with pain. “Jesus fucking Christ, Portmann. Take it easy.”
    She grabbed his hand and jammed it against the dressing. “Hold this. Tight. You need to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.”
    “I hope the hell you know what you’re doing.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ve wrapped horses’ legs a hundred times.”
    “That’s supposed to make me feel better? I’m not a fucking horse!”
    She smiled, hurriedly wound gauze around Joe’s leg, and tied it off as two soldiers hauled him away to the medical tent.
    Another shell whistled toward the ridge and Abigale ran for the nearby trench, where she huddled with several of her colleagues to wait out the artillery fight. They joked, trying to make light of the situation.
    “Joe’s probably happier than hell he took some shrapnel so he’ll get a chopper ride out of here,” Alex, an AP photographer, said. “He’s been working to come up with an exit strategy since the minute he jumped off that goddamned