His .45 lay on the floor now, and his hands were trembling as he tore a match from a matchbook and folded the cover back from the striker. I could hear the men inside the office moving around on top of the broken glass.
"Tony—," I said. I was pressed back against the wall, between the barrels. The air was thick and wet with the smell of the propane.
"What?" he said.
"Tony—"
"It's the only way, man. You know it."
I touched my religious medal and closed my eyes and opened them again. My heart was thundering against my rib cage.
"Do it," I said.
"Listen, you get out of this and I don't, you keep your fucking promise. You look after my son."
"All right, Tony."
Boggs stepped out wide from behind the Coca-Cola machine and fired a pattern of buckshot that thropped past my ear and blew the top off a metal barrel. It rolled in a circle on the cement. Tony struck the loose match in his hand, touched the other matches with the flame, and flipped the burning folder out into the pool of propane.
The pool burst into white and blue flames; then the fire crawled up the silvery jet of propane squirting from the tank. I heard a window crash on the far side of the Coca-Cola machine, and I heard the men inside the office fighting with one another to get out the office door; but now Tony and I were out from behind the barrels, unprotected, and running for the opening in the hangar door.
The ignition of the propane tanks, the fertilizers, the air itself, was like a bolt of lightning striking inside the building. Through the hangar door I saw the rain falling outside, the sodden fields, the wind ruffling the tree line, then Tony hit me hard on the back and knocked me through the door just as the whole building exploded.
His body was framed against the flash, like a tin effigy silhouetted against a forge. He tumbled across the ground, his clothes smoking, his hair singed and stinking like a burnt cat's. The heat was so intense I couldn't feel the rain on my skin. We stumbled forward, past my pickup, into the field, as Jimmie Lee Boggs floored his van down the two-track road. Behind us, for only a moment, I heard screams inside the fire.
But Tony was not finished yet. He sat down in a puddle of water, his knees pulled up before him, aimed the .45 with both hands, and let off two quick founds. One tore through the van's back panel, but the second spiderwebbed the window in the driver's door and blew out the front windshield. It hung down like a crumpled glass apron, and the van careered off the road, whipping the grass under its bumper, spinning divots of mud from under the tires.
"Suck on that one, Jimmie Lee," Tony said.
The van seemed to slow as it made a wide arc through the field; then it lurched on its back springs as the driver shifted down, righted the wheel, and hit the gas again. The tin sides of the building were white with heat, as though phosphorus were burning inside; then they folded softly in upon themselves, like cellophane being consumed, and the roof crashed onto the cement slab. Boggs's van hit the main dirt road and disappeared into the corridor of tr
ees.
Tony tried to get to his feet, but gave it up and sat back down in the water. His face was drawn and empty and dotted with mud.
"I'm going to leave you and come back for you, Tony. I'm borrowing your piece, too." I took the .45 gingerly from his hand and eased the hammer back down.
He wiped his eyes clear with the back of his wrist and looked up and down my trouser legs. Then his hand felt inside my thigh, almost as though he were molesting me. His mouth shaped itself into a small butterfly, and his eyes roved casually over my face.
"Where's your backup people?" he said.
"I don't know. My guess is, though, they've got the road sealed on each end."
"Yeah, that'd make sense."
"Will you wait for me here?"
"I'm going to start walking back."
"I don't think it'd be good for you to meet the guys in the limo."
"My limo's in the bottom of a pond by now, and those guys are halfway across Lake Pontchartrain." Then he said, "Was Kim in on it?"
"No. I never saw her before I got involved with your people."
"That's good. She's a good kid. Do me a favor, will you?"
"What?"