John Sandford - Heat Lightning

They had no excuse for being where they were at: if they were seen, or found, then the person who found them would die. Mai had a silenced Beretta pistol, fitted with a strap, hanging on her back; Phem had the rifle, and a pistol as well.

Tai was four hundred meters away, where he would have a better view of the approaches to the target. Phem eased forward and sideways, moving an inch at a time, so that his face was only inches from Mai’s. “No wind,” he whispered quietly. “Look at the water.”

The water was smooth as a piece of silk, doubling the lights across the way as shimmering upside-down reflections.

“Perfect,” she said. They were whispering in Vietnamese.

After another moment, he said, “I wonder what happened?”

“Virgil must have figured something out,” she whispered. “I can’t imagine that he was there just to help with security.”

“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.

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.”