John Sandford - Heat Lightning

At the end of the field, they turned south again, and Jarlait, breathing heavily, said, “I gotta slow down a minute. I can taste my guts.”

“Gotta slow down anyway-we’re close now.”

They moved slowly after that, stopping every few feet to listen, moving tree to tree, one at a time, covering each other, back toward the water.

If he’d missed them completely, Virgil thought, and if the car had been right down at the water, it was possible that they were gone. On the other hand, if he’d hit them, it was possible that they were lying dead or dying down at the waterline.

When they got to the river, they squatted ten yards apart and listened, and then began moving along the waterline, both crouched, stopping to kneel, to look, one of them always behind a tree. A hundred yards farther along the bank, Virgil saw the tail end of the jon boat. They’d dragged the bow out of the water, but there was no sign of anyone.

Virgil clicked once on the radio to get Jarlait’s attention, mouthed, “Boat,” and jabbed his finger at it, and Jarlait nodded and moved forward and farther away from the water, giving Virgil room to wedge up next to the boat.

They were in a block of trees, Virgil realized-trees that might run out to the road. The field they’d seen was now actually behind them. No sign of a truck or a car track.

They moved a step at a time, until Virgil was right on top of the boat. When he was sure it was clear, he duckwalked down to it and saw the blood right away. He risked the radio and said, quietly, “Blood trail.”

Jarlait, now fifteen yards farther in, looked over at him and nodded.

THE BLOOD looked like rust stains on the summer weeds and brush. There wasn’t much, but enough that whoever was shot had a problem. The blood was clean and dark red, which meant the injured man was probably bleeding from a limb but hadn’t been gut- or lung-shot. Still, they’d need a hospital, or at least a doctor-something to tell the Canadians if Mai and the second man were already gone.

Virgil went to his hands and knees and crawled along the blood trail, grateful for the gloves; Jarlait worked parallel to him. They were a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards from the road again, Virgil thought, but he didn’t know how far from wherever the Viets had left a vehicle. He could see no openings in the treetops, so it must be some distance out.

He picked up a little speed, risked going to his feet, while Jarlait ghosted along to his right. The trees thinned a little, the underbrush got thicker. There were still occasionally drops and smears of blood, but as the plant life got softer, less woody, Mai’s trail became clearer.

“Man, we sound like elephants in a cornfield,” Virgil said. “We gotta slow down.”

From up ahead-a hundred yards, fifty yards?-Virgil heard a clank and both he and Jarlait paused, and Jarlait asked, “What do you think?” and Virgil said, “It sounded like somebody dropped a trailer.”

They both listened and then they heard an engine start, and Virgil started running, Jarlait trying to keep up. At the end of the trail, they found a vehicle track through shoulder-high brush, an abandoned trailer sitting there, and then the end of a pasture, or fallow field, and on the other end of the pasture, a silver minivan bumped over the last few ruts and pulled onto the road a hundred yards away.

Not a hard shot.

Virgil lifted the rifle and put the sights more or less on the moving van and tracked it and picked up the house in the background, said, “Shit,” and took the rifle down.

They were gone.

And though Virgil didn’t know which one of the Viets was hurt, who had been bleeding, he believed that he’d caught something of Mai in the driver’s-side window, at the wheel.

VIRGIL GOT on the radio and called a description of the van back to Queenen, who was holding the fort on the other side of the river. When they walked back past the trailer, they saw, sticking out between a spare wheel and the trailer frame, a manila envelope. Virgil looked at it and found “Virgil” scrawled across it.

Inside were ten color photographs-crime-scene photos, in effect, of the house at Da Nang, apparently taken a day or so after the killings. Flies everywhere, all over the corpses. Two little kids, one facedown, one faceup, twisted and bloated in death. A woman, half nude, flat on her back, her face covered in blood. Another woman lying in a courtyard, apparently shot in the back. An old man, out in front of the house…

Jarlait kept going back to the picture of the kids. “Little teeny kids, man. Little peanuts,” he said.

“Bunton knew about it. So did all the others,” Virgil said. “They couldn’t have stopped it, the way they tell it-Warren did all the killing. But they all kept their mouths shut.”

They thought about that for a few seconds. “Little kids,” Jarlait said. “I can see them coming over, to get the killer. But they killed Oren. Oren didn’t do shit… Oren was a nice guy.”

“The guy you shot on the other side. He’s the guy who shot Oren,” Virgil said.

“All right,” Jarlait said. “So we’re all square with him… Wonder how they happened to have the pictures with them?”

“They were going to leave them on Knox’s body, to make their point.”

NOT YET DONE, not by along way.

As they crossed back over the river, Jarlait said, “Now we’ve broken two laws-illegal entry into Canada, then illegal entry into the States.”

“Probably best not to emphasize that when we’re talking to people,” Virgil said.

VIRGIL CLIMBED OUT of the canoe and helped Jarlait drag it on shore, then Jarlait said, “I gotta find out about Rudy.” Queenen had been standing at the end of the driveway, talking on a cell phone, when he saw them land, and came jogging down the slope toward them.

He took the phone down as he came up and asked, “Anything new?”

“Just what I told you on the radio. We hit one of them, though. There’s blood in their boat and there’s a blood trail up through the trees.” He held up the manila envelope with the pictures. “They left this for us.”

Jarlait asked, “How’s Rudy?”

Queenen said, “He’s at the hospital. Raines said they’re gonna do some surgery, but it’s basically to clean out a hole. Shot went under the skin by his armpit, and then back out. My guy’s getting his scalp sewn up, but he won’t need surgery.”

Virgil: “The three Viets…”

“Yeah. They’re all dead,” Queenen said. “All with multiple wounds. Rudy shot one of them when the grenade went off, and then he and the other guy shot each other, and I shot the second guy. The third guy, I guess you guys…”

“Louis,” Virgil said. “Phem threw a flash-bang and tried to come in behind it. It hit a tree and bounced off and I was right there. Almost knocked me on my ass… If Louis hadn’t been ready, they’d of had me.”

“Well-what are you gonna do?” Queenen asked. He looked away, across the river. “I wish we’d gotten the other two assholes.”

“I gotta get up to see Rudy,” Jarlait said. “His mom is gonna kill me.”

Queenen said, “Virgil, you gotta come up and talk to these deputies. They’re getting antsy as hell. The sheriff’s on his way in.”

Virgil nodded and said, “Let’s go.” To Jarlait: “Get your truck, head on out, but stay in touch.”

BEFORE THEY TALKED to the deputies, they took a quick detour through the woods so Virgil could look at the bodies: Phem, Tai, and another Asian man he didn’t know. Had there been some other way to do this? Or had he really wanted to do it after being used around by the Viets? He’d think about it some other time.

“Lotta blood,” he said to Queenen.