The Price of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

ex-drill-sergeant lungs, managing to smile at the same time because he really ate this shit up. J.T. didn’t take the time to vest up because he knew there was only one way to get through a door, which was first and fastest, because Broker had taught him how to do it. He held a 12-gauge Remington riot pump steady before him with the muzzle gaping like an open onrushing manhole straight to Redneck Hell: “Freeze—you fuckin’ piece of shit—I’ll blow your mother-fuckin’ head loose from your fat cracker ass!”
    Broker heard a groan as Andy collapsed to his knees and somewhere Tabor was yelling how he wanted to see his lawyer and other people were in the room giving Andy his rights but he was giving his full attention to Earl and Nina was getting in the way trying to step in and kick Earl and catching Broker in the ribs a couple of times and Earl had this confused little boy lost look in his eyes as his cheeks popped like chicken bones because he’d strayed too far from home in Alabama, and—ha, mother fucker—Brokers from Minnesota had met Alabamians before, in July 1863, at a place called Cemetery Ridge and, like his ancestors before him, Earl had come too far north and walked into the remorselessly moving parts of Det. Lt. Phillip Broker of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
    But then Earl rallied and, with an insane red-and-gray bloodshot flapping in his eyes, surprised Broker by clamping the edge of Broker’s left thumb in his teeth, as he mashed down and Broker felt the teeth sink into the skin, the muscle, and the bone of the top joint.
    Earl’s jaw muscles pulsated through the blood running down his face and Broker screamed when J.T. butt-stroked Earl with the 12-gauge to make him let go. The jarring pain traveled—electric, incandescent—up his arm.
    “Don’t,” screamed Broker.
    Earl wouldn’t let go. He growled even though he was covered with cops grabbing at him, and his neck and jaw continued to surge, leathery and lethal as some damn snapping turtle.
    Five pairs of hands searched for a hold on Earl’s face. Fingers clawed in his nostrils, yanking back, while Earl growled and shook his head and Broker screamed.
    Procedure went to hell in the bizarre circumstance. “Phil, don’t move,” shouted Ed Ryan, the ATF agent in charge. “Grab that fucker’s head. Stabilize it. Don’t let him shake like that, he’ll bite it off .”
    Somebody in a vest and black cap was cuffing Nina.
    “J.T., keep her close,” Broker yelled, rolling his eyes toward Nina, and Merryweather, who’d been taping the caper off the wire in Broker’s pager, pushed the officer away from Nina and took the guy aside, explaining. And Broker was sure that the terrible crunching sound that he heard with his ears, but also was hearing inside his body traveling up his arm, was his thumb being bitten off.
    A dozen officers, Robocopped in black body armor, bore down in a twenty-four-handed grab-ass all over Earl who continued to growl and tried to thrash. They sought leverage on the bulging muscles of Earl’s neck and jaw, experimentally jabbed him in the eyes; one guy had a wooden spatula from the kitchen and was trying to pry between Earl’s teeth. Earl had these serious teeth. The spatula broke.
    “Man will not let go . I’m gonna have to cap the sucker,” said J.T. Merryweather loudly for effect, resigned, dubiously setting down the shotgun and drawing his pistol.
    “You can’t shoot a guy for biting somebody,” a voice yelled.
    “Hell I can’t, he’s attacking an officer. Just shoot him a little bit, to make him stop.”
    A woman deputy from Dakota County wondered aloud, academically, “Where exactly would you shoot him?”
    Sweat poured into Broker’s eyes. The pain was incredible, immobilizing, and it was just a thumb .
    Several paramedics pushed through the house, which was now crawling with men and women wearing badges and armed to the teeth and the Washington County SWAT team was there and they