Craine stood on the dock, staring up over the fields, watching the unfolding slaughter. His granddaughter was up in the house, but what could he do?

He made up his mind quickly: he could leave.

He hefted the leather bag into the swamp boat, untied the boat, and jumped in. He grabbed the wheel, hit the ignition button. The engine sputtered, then came to life in a small cloud of blue smoke. He lowered the long axle of the propeller into the water, pushed the throttle gently, and moved the boat slowly out onto the channel. The sound of the engine was muffled by the noise of gunfire. He made his way out into the dark water, steered toward the open channel and beyond it the sea, and freedom.

As he was nearing the highway bridge, the sky lit up. Craine turned to look back at his farm, and saw the cops scattered on the slope up to the bunkhouses, men shooting down at them. He saw Bentas drop, shredded by machine-gun fire from a man in a dark suit and body armor, shooting from the enclosure. He recognized the man as Bartley, one of the cops supposedly bought by the cartel.

His pigs were getting shot as they ran through the battle, falling in the withering hail of bullets. He watched one of the larger hogs sprinting across the grass suddenly skew and tumble, rolling into a slide down the hill, hitting two men hiding behind a shield. The men slid downhill with the pig, and Craine saw one of them shot in the head before the three came to rest just by the road. One of the men crawled out of the pile and onto the road to lie on the berm. He lay still; his partner was clearly dead.

The daylight flare died out, but Craine had seen enough of the channel to make his way under the bridge safely. The sound of the engine reverberated against the metal struts and the rock foundation, and he pushed the throttle, jammed it forward. The bow rose a little as the propeller dug deep, and soon Craine was skimming out over the Gulf of Mexico.