After detailing his “fun and games” scheme to Gabi, Chuck called Metcalf on his cell.
“Hey, Jerry,” Chuck said, “how’d you like to get out of town for a bit while we’re waiting for the next storm threat to materialize?”
“Anything’s better than hanging around in Oral Robertsville. Whaddaya got in mind?”
“How about as a complement to your tornado shots—”
“Which we haven’t got yet.”
“Which we haven’t got yet—thank you for reminding me—we film some really large hail?”
“What’re talkin’ here, Chuckie, like D-cup sized stuff?’
It dawned on Chuck he might need to come up with a totally new hail-size comparison paradigm for Metcalf. Jesus, does everybody from Hollywood think like this? He decided it might be unique to Metcalf. “I was thinking more along the lines of apple or grapefruit.”
“Doesn’t sound that big to me.”
“It would if you got whacked in the head by one.”
“Got whacked in the face by a 44 triple-D once. That hurt.”
“Spare me the details. You interested or not?”
“Like I said, anything to get out of Tulsa. Where’re we headed?”
“How about to the site of a little film nostalgia, the Red River?”
“Ah, yes. The great John Wayne. And not that it’s germane, but Red River was filmed mostly in Arizona. What time do we boogie?”
BY NOON, THEY were on the road, heading southwest on I-44 toward Oklahoma City. Metcalf had elected to leave his Navigator in Tulsa and ride in the camera truck, so the caravan consisted only of Chuck’s Expedition and the rig with the 22-foot camera crane. Gabi and Stormy rode with Chuck. Ty had remained behind, choosing instead to visit the Tulsa Air and Space Museum.
Late afternoon brought the ad hoc chase team to Wichita Falls, Texas, just south of the Red River. There, Chuck turned west, following US 287. At a truck stop outside of Harrold, they took a break.
While the rest of the team piled into the facility to use the restrooms and raid a Subway for footlongs, and Stormy trotted off on her own to do her thing, Chuck examined the latest radar imagery on his laptop. “Got a target,” he yelled to Metcalf when he returned.
“Can I finish my hoagie?”
“Not here. Eat on the run. We’re heading south. There’s a big hailer near Crowell moving southeast. We’re gonna intercept it.” Chuck pointed southwest. “You can see its anvil.” The feathering cirrus, tinted orange and salmon by the low-angle sun, radiated outward from the distant storm like the bill of a ball cap.
“And when we catch it?”
“Your cinematographers will get some super shots—close-ups of stones the size of baseballs.”
“I’ve known some guys in Hollywood that had stones that big,” Metcalf said as he scrambled into the truck.
Gabi took over driving the Expedition while Chuck navigated, monitoring the storm on his computer.
“You think this is going to work?” Gabi asked.
“It should. But let’s make sure. There’s a little town, Barrington, about 10 miles ahead of us. We’ll mosey through it kind of slow and make sure it has what we need. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, so I need to confirm my memory.”
“This could be fun.”
“Yeah, as long as Metcalf doesn’t stroke out first.”
They reached Barrington 15 minutes later.
“God, this is depressing,” Gabi said, surveying the hamlet. Half the buildings appeared abandoned or boarded up, many homes seemed below the threshold of ramshackle, and dozens of trucks and autos—those that had not yet descended to rusted-out hulk status—rested on blocks.
“Yeah, I know,” Chuck responded. “It looks like some photographs I’ve seen that were taken during the Dust Bowl days.”
Yet there were signs of viability: a Wendy’s that appeared fairly new, a service station with two pumps, a small supermarket with signs in both English and Spanish, and a bar and grill that had more vehicles in the parking lot than did the grocery store. Next to the bar and grill Chuck spotted what they needed. He pointed it out to Gabi, who nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Go about a mile out of town and stop. That should set us up just right. Then—oh, wow!”
“What?”
“This thing’s spitting out grapefruit-sized hail now.”
“That oughta kill a few cows.”
“Not to mention people if they get caught outside. Hail that big can punch holes in houses.”
“You sure you wanna try this?”
“No problem. I’m a trained professional.”
“How’s that worked for you so far?” She looked at him and raised one eyebrow.
“Just drive,” he said.
After two minutes, Chuck told Gabi to make a U-turn and stop. As she made her turn on the quiet highway, Chuck signaled the driver of the camera truck to do the same. Both vehicles halted along the shoulder, an area thick with dry, short grass.
Chuck and Gabi joined Metcalf, Boomie, and Dakota between the two vehicles for a quick conference. Stormy, nose to ground, cruised up and down the roadside until she flushed a quail from the grass adjacent to a wire fence. Peals of thunder from the approaching supercell tumbled over the dusty prairie in intermittent bursts.
Metcalf studied the storm. “How big ya say the hail is?”
“At last check, four inches. Grapefruits.”
“Uh, we’re kinda exposed out here, aren’t we? I mean, ya already lost one rig for me.” Metcalf looked around as though expecting shelter to materialize from the darkening sky.
“You’re right, boss.” Chuck made a show of evaluating Metcalf’s concern. “The main hail core will probably just miss us. But—” he rubbed his chin feigning thought “—we probably shouldn’t deploy the crane. It would take us too long to get it down if we have to run for it.”
“If we have to run for it? Shit. Where we gonna run, to? We’re a mile outside East Bumfuck with its two-pump gas station. You might be able to hide your Ford under the overhang there, but where am I gonna put this rig?” He pointed at the silver truck.
“Could be a problem, all right. Well, let’s not worry about it. Couldn’t you use that Steadicam thing you were telling me about.”
“Hey, excellent idea, Numb Nuts.” Metcalf’s face tightened, turned a light shade of red. “Hey, Boomie,” he called out. “Come here. Ya wanna get the Steadicam vest on and stand out in a hailstorm with ice balls the size of Rhode Island?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. Be a sport. You’d get some great shots. Probably a raise, too.”
“Posthumously.”
Metcalf spread his hands, palms up, in front of Chuck. “Well, another wasted trip. What the hell were you thinkin’, Chuckie?”
Chuck held up his right hand, signaled for silence. “Listen,” he said.
“What?” Metcalf responded, the word edged in snippiness.
“Hear that?”
“Thunder?”
“No. A thrumming sound. Like distant jet engines.”
“It’s thunder, weather boy.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not rumbling. It’s steady.”
“So?”
“That’s a hail roar.”
“Hail roar? Bullshit.”
“In hailstorms, the stones ride vertical air currents up and down. If the stones are large enough, like in this storm, they ram into one another—bumper cars in the sky. That’s what you’re hearing.”
“Are you pullin’ my pud, Chaz?”
“Google it. It’s for real. Not many people have ever heard it, though. Or didn’t know what they were hearing if they did.”
Gabi stepped close to Chuck and whispered in
his ear. “This isn’t part of the game, is it?”
He shook his head. “Real deal.”
Metcalf stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the storm. Without looking away from it, he called to the lady in his crew. “Dakota, grab the boom mike and see if you can get this. If Fearless Leader is right, this might be great stuff for the film.” He turned to Chuck. “Maybe you finally done somethin’ right.”
Dakota and Boomie wrestled to get the boom mike from the rear of the truck, but it was too late. A huge rain drop splatted down on the road, then another and another. Within a matter of seconds, a monsoonal downpour ensued, turning the landscape into liquid gray.
Chuck and the rest dove back into their vehicles. The first hailstones, pea-sized, pinged down, mixing with the downpour. The rain abruptly relented, but was replaced by even bigger hail that thudded into the vehicles like large-caliber bullets.
“Fast as you can, back to town,” Chuck told Gabi. He called Metcalf on his cell. “Follow us, Jerry. And get Boomie ready to use the Steadicam.”
“Forget about the Steadicam, Bozo,” Metcalf yelled. “If you don’t get us out of this hail, we’re gonna have another rig turned into junk yard fodder.”
“In my business,” Chuck responded, his voice calm and steady, “what I’m about to do is known as ‘core punching.’ I’m taking us right into the center of the hail storm.”
“You’re fired, Chaz, you hear me? You’re fired! You’re fucking incompetent!”
Chuck imagined if Metcalf were wearing a blood pressure monitor it would have red-lined.
Now it was golfball-sized chunks of ice that ricocheted off the windshield and exploded like shotgun blasts on the roof. “This is gonna be close, Gabi,” Chuck said. “Any bigger and we’re gonna lose the windshield.” He swallowed hard. Not another damn miscalculation.
Behind him, the driver of the camera truck, Dakota, flashed the headlights and lay on the horn . . . as though that would deliver them for the storm’s wrath.
Hail continued to thunder down. In a pasture adjacent to the road, cattle, seeking shelter, huddled humpbacked, like Halloween cats, under scattered trees. But even the trees offered scant protection as the hailstones stripped away leaves and branches as if they were but papier-mâché.
In the rear seat of the Expedition, Stormy, whining, paced from one side to the other.
They entered the edge of Barrington. “Almost there,” Chuck said. None too soon, he knew. The epicenter of the hail core was almost upon them. Had he cut this too close? The stones had become weaponized, hammering into the SUV like rocket-propelled grenades. Gabi screamed as a concentric crack blossomed on the windshield.
Chapter Fifteen
FRIDAY, MAY 3
“TURN NOW,” Chuck yelled over the din of the storm’s assault.
Gabi whipped the steering wheel hard right and hurled the Expedition into one of two bays in a ratty-looking carwash. The camera rig followed, barreling into the second bay but tearing away part of the building’s structure as the scaffolding on top of the truck’s cab scraped through the entrance.
Metcalf, out of the truck instantly, leveled a string of profanities at Chuck that included words Chuck had no idea existed. It seemed fortunate a cinder block wall separated him from Metcalf.
When the tirade ceased, Chuck yelled back. “Are you filming this, Jerry? If not, you’re missing one of the greatest opportunities ever in cinematography.” Probably hyperbole, but he didn’t care. It had been worth it just to drag Metcalf to the edge, leading him to believe his one remaining camera rig was about to be pulverized by an artillery barrage of hailstones.
Gabi stood next to Chuck in the bay. As close as she was to him, she had to raise her voice to be heard over the din of the storm as huge chunks of ice banged off the flimsy roof of the carwash. “We’re sick, aren’t we?” She stifled a laugh.
“Absolutely,” Chuck responded. “Totally adolescent.”
Stormy, tail between her legs, crouched at the edge of the bay, watching the landscape morph to transient winter. Enormous hailstones, some approaching the size of softballs, exploded off the asphalt outside the carwash. Smaller stones bounced into the air as if springing from a trampoline. Across the street, a tree, severed by the icy onslaught, took out a power line in a brilliant blue-white flash.
Several giant stones battered holes in the roof of the carwash; cascades of water and ice gushed into the improvised shelter. Gabi and Chuck scurried back into the Expedition. Chuck heard Metcalf, in the adjacent bay, screaming at Boomie to get “some fucking film.”
The blitz of massive hail seemed to go on forever, though Chuck knew it was only minutes. The fusillade of stones echoed like small arms fire. And indeed, after the attack waned, the small town looked as though it been raked by gunfire: shattered windows and windshields, dented cars and trucks, fractured roofs, split trees, broken picket fences. A cacophonous chorus of vehicle alarms, triggered by the storm, replaced the thunder of the hail.
After the storm abated, Metcalf stalked into the bay where Chuck and Gabi waited. “What the hell was that all about?” he yelled. “You had this all planned ahead of time, didn’t you? Ducking into a car wash and all. Just rattling my cage. Fun and games. Good fodder for a magazine story. What a bunch of dipshits. I swear, I’m gonna claim PTSD after all this is over. And who’s gonna pay for the damage my rig did to the carwash?” Metcalf, gasping for breath, ceased his harangue.
“Well, it was your truck that tore away the superstructure, not mine,” Chuck said. “Besides, you probably got some of the greatest shots ever of large hail. The return on that oughta cover the damage.”
“I didn’t hire you to lead me into a frigging hail storm, you clown. I hired you to find me a fire-breathin’ twister. So far you’ve failed miserably. Hope you enjoyed your little laugh, because it appears to me that’s all you’re ever gonna earn out here. Let’s get the fuck back to Tulsa now.”
“METCALF DIDN’T TAKE that well,” Gabi said as they headed back to the city.
“He’ll change his tune when he sees the film,” Chuck said. “Besides, the trip was worth it just to see Foghorn Leghorn get his feathers ruffled. Like he said, that may be the only reward I’ll get.”
“You’re raising the white flag already?”
He slowed down as they eased into heavier traffic on I-44 in Oklahoma City. “Let’s say I’ve run it part way up the pole. It’s half time and we haven’t scored yet. Our next shot at putting points on the board won’t be until Monday. If we can’t do it then, that may be the end game for us. I don’t see any other threats until the following week.”
“And the clock runs out next Saturday?”
“That’s about it.”
“So bye-bye million bucks unless we hit it big on Monday,” she said softly.
He glanced over at her and found her staring at him, her face streaked in neon as the lights of the city, flickering to life in the growing darkness, flashed past. Far to the south, behind them, lightning painted the horizon in broad, explosive sheets of electric whiteness.
He shrugged. “Well, I can’t lose what I never had. I feel worse about not being able to help you. If only I’d had us in Texas that first day . . .”
She reached over and squeezed his hand. “So, ya wanna just call it quits and go bowling or something?”
He laughed out loud. “No, it’s just that—”
“Then quit kvetching and find us a tornado, O Great White Hunter. The Fat Lady isn’t even humming yet.” She gave his hand a little extra pump and released it.
“THANKS, SIS.”
“Is that how you think of me, as a sister?” The words slipped out of Gabi’s mouth unchecked. Without meaning to, she’d verbalized a thought. She hoped Chuck couldn’t see the blush she felt rushing into her cheeks.
“How do yo
u want me to think of you?”
She cracked the window open. How do I answer that? In truth, I don’t know. Sister is certainly not the right answer. Neither is FBI agent. Jesus, why am I even thinking about this? She put the window up and said, “Just a dizzy broad who writes fluff for magazines.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she said. Time to change the subject. She placed an open palm on top of her head. “See? Feature writer’s hat on. And with it, a question: Why do you—why does anybody—chase tornadoes? I’m not sure I get it. I mean, you’re pursuing things that kill people, things you can’t kill in return.”
“So how is that any different from what you’re doing, Agent Mederios?”
“It’s my job.”
“Once upon a time, I had a job chasing storms.”
“I know. But give me a more ‘from-the-gut’ answer. What’s the attraction in chasing?”
“It’s different for different people, I suppose. For some, it’s just the thrill of the chase, Belling the Cat—being able to look into the eyes, so to speak, of one of the most powerful forces on earth. For others, it’s seeing beauty in fury, like a perfectly symmetric supercell with a wall cloud that looks like an alien spacecraft. Chasers call it a ‘mothership’.” He glanced at Gabi. “Maybe you’ve seen photos. So flawless and spectacular they looked like they’ve been photoshopped.”
She shook her head. She’d never really been attracted to severe weather.
“There are a few people,” Chuck continued, “from universities, for instance, who pursue storms for research purposes. Trying to position radars to look into the bowels of a tornado, or attempting to place instrument packages in the direct path of a twister . . . like Mountain Men setting trap lines.”
“Anybody actually make a living chasing storms?” Gabi asked, then, considering Chuck’s legacy, wished she hadn’t. “I mean, you know, besides leading tours?”
Stormy, from the rear seat, stuck her nose over the center console and licked Chuck’s elbow. He petted her and answered Gabi’s question.
“Beyond the tour business? No, probably not. There are guys who supplement their income by selling videos and photos to TV stations and stock agencies, but with the exception of one or two, it probably doesn’t pay the freight.”
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