Heat Lightning (35 page)

"Maybe he was there for Warren."

"I don't think so. He came so fast--he felt so urgent . . . he discovered something."

"If he did, do you think he took Sinclair?"

"I don't know. There are too many possibilities."

THE EARBUD in Mai's right ear clicked and she saw Phem put a hand to his ear. Mai slipped out the walkie-talkie and said, "Yes."

"Four cars coming, convoy."

"Yes."

Phem moved away from her, and though she couldn't see him well, she felt him extending the rifle toward the target and then stripping off the head net. He'd bought a bag of beans to use as a rifle rest, and she heard that crunch as the forestock wiggled down into it, and a click as the safety came off. If the target appeared, there wouldn't be much time--maybe only a second or two.

Mai put her glasses on the house; looking through them was like watching something on a black-and-white television screen, except that the image was green-and-black. There was enough ambient light that the entire target area looked like a daylight scene.

She took the glasses down, a bit night-blind after looking through the glasses, put the radio to her lips, clicked it once, and said, "Still coming?"

Tai: "Yes. They will be at the turn in ten seconds."

She looked that way, counted, saw the headlights at the corner. She said to Phem, who was concentrating on his scope, "Headlights at the corner. I think it could be them. Here they come, they're coming this way. One-two-three-four vehicles . . ."

Phem was unmoving; she could see a ring of green light where it slipped past his eye from the tube inside the scope. She called it for him, whispering: "Fifty meters. Thirty meters. They're slowing, it's them. Ten meters, the first car turns, I think he will be in the second car, Tai says he always rides in the second car."

The first car drove up the driveway and went all the way to the back, where it faced a garage, but the garage doors didn't go up--the walk from the garage to the back door of the house would be longer than the walk from a car in the driveway to the house.

They were apparently going to minimize the exposure. . . .

The second car turned in, pulled even with the back of the house. The third and fourth stayed in the street, one blocking the driveway.

Two men got out of the first car and walked to the back of the house.

Two more got out of the second car. They looked around, then the man on the driver's side, the side closest to the house, opened the back door of the car and stood beside it.

Warren got out and took a step toward the house, stepped just for a second out from behind the man holding the door. . . .

Phem fired, and Mai saw a muted flash and was slapped by the loud whack, and Phem said, "Go . . ." and they were scrambling along behind the screen of bushes and Mai could hear a distant shouting and then gunfire, but couldn't see the gun flashes and had no idea where the bullets were going. . . . They crossed the street as planned, running hard, and cut across a lawn and then between two houses, around a pool and over a fence, Mai clicking the radio button as they went, never stopping, to a side street, and there was Tai, backing up, reversing down the street, and they were in the back of the truck and it was rolling away.

Tai asked, "Good shot?"

"Good shot," Phem said. "I make no guarantees, but it felt good going out."

Mai knew that Warren was dead. She asked, "Are you okay?"

Phem smiled at her. "You are like my mother. I am okay."

Mai turned on the radio, to an all-news station, and they headed north through the welter of streets. They would take I-94 to a twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart store on the northwest edge of the Twin Cities, where Tai would move to another car.

From there they would continue north up most of the length of Minnesota and along the eastern edge of North Dakota toward Canada, before they cut back into Minnesota for the last page of the assignment.

The second car was needed should they be stopped by a highway patrolman or a local police officer. They would kill the officer and abandon the known car for the second vehicle.

After that, they would have no backup.

But there was no reason that they should be stopped. Both cars were rentals, taken under completely clean IDs from California.

The entrance ramp came up, and they were gone.

Chapter
25

THE ST. PAUL cops came out of the woodwork, from staging areas a block or so back from the golf course, and took up stations along the streets at the perimeters. A deputy chief named Purser said, "A goddamn rat couldn't get out of there on his hands and knees."

Virgil, Davenport, and Rose Marie were inside, looking through the windows up at the hillside golf course. A minute passed, two, without any incoming reports. Virgil said to Davenport, "They're not up there."

Rose Marie asked, "How do you know?"

"I'm not getting the right vibration," Virgil said. "When they saw St. Paul coming in, they should have moved. Instantly, before everybody got set. They should have made a break for it. They should have had a backup plan. They should have had somebody on the outside . . . they should have done something."

Davenport nodded. "They're gone--if they were ever here."

Virgil dug out his notebook, flipped it open, found Warren's cell-phone number.

"What?" Warren's voice was positively noxious.

"I've got a bad feeling here," Virgil said. "We dropped the net and nobody made a move. You gotta take it easy. They could be coming after you at your house."

"I'm three blocks out," Warren said. "I got three guys inside and they're okay, I just talked to them. I got guys patrolling the neighborhood. Nothing going on. We'll be there in one minute."

"Keep your guys awake until we get them," Virgil said.

"Yeah. And you know what, Flowers? You can still go fuck yourself."

Virgil laughed as he shut his cell phone, stood up, looked out through the front windows at the dark hillside and the golf course. "Guy picked the right job--professional asshole."

Davenport said, "You might want to stand back from the window in case they're still out there. If they've really got a sniper scope . . . They might be a little pissed at you."

"What about Sinclair?" Virgil asked.

"I don't know. I suggest that we put him inside and give him his phone call. He says that's an option, and after we do it, we should get some kind of response from somebody. Find out who's in charge, in any case."

"What if--" The phone in his hand rang, and he looked down at the LCD: Warren. He flipped it open. "Yeah. Flowers . . ."

The guy on the other end was shrieking. "We're taking fire, we're taking fire. Warren's down, Warren's down, he's dead, we got Minneapolis cops coming, we got medics coming, but we, shit, you better get here."

"Ah, man--you're taking fire right now?"

"Right now. Right now. I'm in the driveway, I'm under the car, I can hear a fucking machine gun, man, can you hear that?" The guy was shouting again. "Christ, it's a nightmare, they got fuckin' machine guns. . . ."

"Warren's down?"

"I'm looking at him, man, his whole fuckin' head is gone, man, he's gone, he's gone, I got blood all over me, I'm drowning in blood, man . . ."

"We're on the way, we're on the way. . . ."

Virgil looked at Davenport. "They just hit Warren. They're talking machine guns. Warren's dead in his driveway."

THEY TOOK Davenport's car, and Davenport pushed it hard, out to the interstate, into Minneapolis, Del trailing behind in the state car. Warren's neighborhood had been shut off, and two helicopters were picking through the brush with searchlights. They found a place to park, and Virgil, Del, and Davenport walked down the street to Warren's place, where a dozen cops were milling around in the yard. Eight or ten cop cars were parked along the street and on the other side of the lake, and two hundred people from the neighborhood were out in the street, standing in clumps, watching.

They found a Minneapolis captain named Roark who'd taken charge of the scene, who nodded at Lucas, checked out his tux, asked, "Is that the new BCA uniform?" and said, not waiting for an answer, "I hear you guys are involved."

Lucas nodded. "This is the lemon killings. The killers are three Vietnamese, a woman and two men. We can get prints and DNA anytime we need them--on the woman, anyway. Probably on all three. They're running."

"Any idea on their vehicles?"

Virgil shook his head. "No. But they'll have an exit plan, so they're twenty miles from here and moving. Or they're getting on a plane somewhere."

Del asked, "You know what happened?"

"They got him when he was uncovered for one second, getting out of his car," Roark said. "His bodyguard swears it was one second. They don't know where the shot came from, but we think it was from across the lake. We sent some guys over there with a flashlight, and they found a matted-down place in the brush, and a mosquito net thing, you know, a head net, and a beanbag that was probably used as a rest."

Virgil looked. "Easy shot, if you know guns."

"I talked to one of the bodyguards, he said they never thought about the other side of the lake. The lake was like a barrier, but it's only about a hundred and forty yards."

"Goddamnit," Davenport said. "They might never have been at the golf course. If they knew he was coming out tonight, that would have been enough to wait here."

"What about machine guns?" Virgil asked Roark. "We talked to a guy . . ."

Roark was shaking his head. "One of the bodyguards freaked out and hosed down a ceramic statue. Blew it up, said he thought the guy had ducked for cover, so he put a couple more magazines into it."

"So no machine guns?"

"We think it was one shot," Roark said. "Big gun. Warren never knew what hit him. Blew out a good piece of his head. He was dead before he hit the ground."

Davenport looked at Virgil. "You think they'll try for Knox?"

"Yeah. They don't know that we know where he is--in fact, they think we don't know where he is."

"Better get your ass up there," Davenport said. "I'll get you a plane, get some guys from the Bemidji office. Take some heavy shit with you."

"I gotta get back to my truck. . . ."

"We're not doing any good here. Let's go."

ON THE WAY OUT, Virgil got on his phone and called Louis Jarlait at Red Lake. "Louis, We figured out the lemon killers. Three Vietnamese, two guys and a woman. They're headed your way; they're going after a guy up on the Rainy River, outside of International Falls. I'm flying into International Falls tonight, but I could use a little help--guys who know their way around in the woods."

"I could get Rudy and go up there," Jarlait said.

"Man, I'd appreciate it. We're gonna get some guys from the BCA office in Bemidji, but they'll be investigator types. We need some guys with deer rifles."

When he was off the phone, he said to Davenport, "You should talk to Sinclair tonight. I'm wondering if he told me what he did to flush Warren out in the open. To make a predictable move."

"I'll do that. You take it easy up there."

As they came up to his truck, Virgil said, "I'm going to call you in about one minute--they're probably still monitoring my truck, and I'm going to tell them I don't know where Knox is. You might get a little pissed about that."

"I'll play," Davenport said.

IN THE TRUCK, headed down to the BCA office, Virgil got on the phone to Davenport, shouting: "Warren's dead. They shot him at his house. . . ."

Davenport: "Have you found Knox? Where the hell is Knox?"

"I don't know. His daughter says he does photography, that he might be out in North Dakota somewhere. Maybe I could put out a BOLO on his car, maybe with the North Dakota guys. I don't know where to take it. . . ."

"How are these Vietnamese finding this shit out?" Davenport demanded. "Where are they getting their information?"

"Good fuckin' question," Virgil said. "I'll talk to Sinclair about that."

"You said he wasn't home."

"He's not. I don't know where the hell he is," Virgil said. "He's not answering his cell. Maybe he's with the Viets--he was some kind of fruitcake left-winger. . . ."

"So what're you gonna do?"

"I'm going to put Shrake outside Sinclair's house. If he comes back, we nail him. I'm gonna head down to the office, start working the phones. Honest to God, we gotta find Knox. Maybe tomorrow morning we could drop something in the media, something that would get him to call in."

"If he sees it," Davenport said. "Man, you gotta do better than this. You just gotta do better than this."

THEY SOUNDED pretty good, Virgil thought after he rang off. He'd have bought it.

Virgil stopped first at the BCA office, transferred his outdoors duffel to a state car, including head nets and cross-country ski gloves, good for shooting and fending off mosquitoes. From the BCA equipment room, he got armor and an M16 and five magazines and two night-vision monoculars. Driving the state car, he stopped at the motel, picked up a jacket, and traded his cowboy boots for hiking boots.