Blood risk

raised the shotgun and fired at the sky as Jimmy tore rubber getting out of there, slammed the door after they were moving and dropped onto the seat below window level until he felt the car swinging around the upper curve.
        "Are we just leaving Bachman there?" Harris asked.
        Tucker peeled off his mask and pushed his sweat-slicked hair out of his face. His stomach was bothering him worse than ever. He said, "We don't have the means to get him out and hold off Baglio's whole army at the same time." He belched and tasted the orange juice that had been his entire breakfast.
        "Still…" Harris began.
        Tucker interrupted him, his voice tense and bitter. "Bachman was right-we did need a fifth man."
        
        _
        
        "We're boxed," Shirillo said.
        From here on out, the private road no longer hugged the edge of the ravine, struck toward the broad interior slopes of the mountain with land opening on both sides. Flanked by pines, it fed ruler-straight into the circular driveway in front of Rossario Baglio's gleaming white many-windowed monstrosity of a house only another mile ahead. Just exiting that drive, a black Mustang arrowed directly for them.
        "Not boxed," Tucker said, pointing ahead and to the left. "Is that a turn-off?"
        Jimmy stared. "Yeah, looks like it."
        "Take it."
        The boy wheeled hard left as they came up on the dirt track, braked, barely avoided ripping through several small, sturdy pine trees, slammed brutally across a series of wet-weather ruts, apparently unperturbed by all of it. Tramping down on the accelerator, he grinned into the rear-view mirror and said, "It's not my car."
        Despite himself Tucker laughed. "Just keep your eyes on the road."
        Jimmy looked ahead, straddled a large stone in the middle of the way and built more speed.
        The wind hissed at an open wing window, and insects smacked against the glass like soft bullets.
        "They're right behind us," Harris said. "Just turned in."
        Both Tucker and Harris stared through the back window, dizzied by the green blur of trees and underbrush, brambles and grass that whipped by on both sides, waiting for the Mustang to bounce into view. They were startled, then, when Shirillo braked to a full stop three quarters of the way up the long hill. "What the hell…" Tucker said.
        "There's a log across the road," Shirillo said. "Either we move it or we go on foot from here."
        "Everybody out," Tucker said, pushing open his door. "We move it. Pete, bring the Thompson."
        The log was the corpse of a once mighty pine tree fully thirty feet long and as many inches in diameter, with a couple of thick branches that had been chopped short with a sharp ax. It looked as if it had been put there to keep anyone from using the road beyond this point, though it was just as likely that it was spillage from a logging truck when the forests had served to feed a paper mill or planking factory. Tucker directed all three of them to get on the same end of the log, spaced three feet apart, one foot on each side of the tree. Heaving together, stepping sideways in an awkward little dance, they managed to swing it around about a yard.
        "Not enough," Shirillo said.
        Harris said, "Where's the Mustang?"
        "It can't move as fast on these bad roads as our heavy car can," Tucker said. He sucked in his breath and said, "Again!"
        This time they moved the barrier almost far enough to squeeze the Dodge past, but when they stood to catch their breaths, their backs cracking with a pain like fire, Harris said, "I hear the other car."
        Tucker listened, heard it too, wiped his bruised hands against his slacks to make them stop stinging. "Take your Thompson and get ready to meet the gentlemen, Pete."
        Harris smiled, picked up the machine gun and trotted to the rear of the Dodge, where he sprawled in the middle of the dusty road. He was a large man, over six feet, more than two hundred and forty pounds; when he went down, the dust rose around him in a cloud. He raised the black barrel and centered it where the Mustang would be when it rounded the bend below. The large circular cannister of ammunition that rose out of the machine gun gave the impression of something insectoid, something that was somehow using instead of being used, an enormous leech draining Harris's body of its blood.
        Tucker bent and