While the southern storm now appeared the more robust of the two, it would take them at least an hour to get into position to safely interdict it, and there were no guarantees it would still be a viable target then. A bird in hand . . .
Chuck turned toward Ty. “We’re gonna dance with the one what brung us,” he said.
Ty sighed theatrically and sat back. “Nothing like a little corn-fed wisdom to make a million-dollar decision,” he said.
“What would you do?” Gabi asked, her tone less than conversational.
Chuck reached over and touched her arm. A friendly “back off” gesture. He didn’t need Gabi rushing to his defense.
“I’m not the one bearing the load,” Ty said. “But sometimes—” he nodded toward the SUV’s window as two more chase cars zoomed by, southward bound “—it makes sense to go with the preponderance of evidence. Or in this case, actions.”
Chuck glanced in his rearview mirror. Metcalf’s SUV and the camera truck had pulled off the road behind him. He saw Metcalf talking animatedly on his cell phone, obviously not to him. To Metcalf’s bosses in Hollywood? To Boomie in the camera rig? Chuck stepped out of the Expedition and walked toward Metcalf.
Metcalf waved him off, pulled the Navigator onto the road, made a U-turn and signaled for Boomie to follow.
Chucked dashed back to his vehicle.
“What the hell is going on?” Gabi asked.
Ty, looking at the departing vehicles through the rear window, answered, “Insurrection.”
Chapter Eighteen
TUESDAY, MAY 7
BY THE TIME Chuck got the Expedition turned around, Metcalf’s Lincoln and the camera rig had a good half-mile lead on him. “Call Metcalf,” Chuck said, handing his cell phone to Gabi. She punched in the number and gave the phone back to him.
“What in the hell are you doing, Jerry?” Chuck barked when Metcalf answered.
“Finding us a tornado. Something you haven’t delivered on, jefe.”
“We had a really nice supercell in our crosshairs.”
“Yeah? Well maybe it was too nice. We tracked it for two friggin’ hours and it didn’t do a damn thing. Now you wanna beat a dead horse while the rest of the chasers gallop off to greener pastures.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Know what?”
“That they’re heading for greener pastures.” Chuck put a bit more pressure on the accelerator pedal.
“I’m sticking with the majority, Charlie. Somebody in this ‘Land That Time Left Behind’ must know what they’re doing.”
“In case you missed it, Mr. Hollywood, the majority, as you call it, cast its lot with the northern supercell just like us. Now you’re gonna follow the lemmings over a cliff?”
“You’re assuming it’s a cliff.”
“I’m not assuming anything. I’m telling you it’s a bone-headed idea. Even if the southern storm drops a tornado, you’re out of position to catch it.” The Expedition hit a pot hole and jounced hard. Chuck fought the steering wheel to hold the vehicle on a straight course.
“I’ve got the radio on, Chuckie. A tornado warning’s just been issued for the next county south. We’re gonna get that sucker.”
Chuck called up the warning overlay on his computer. Metcalf was right. A tornado warning had been posted for the cell to the south, its radar echo now displaying a prominent hook. He muted the phone. “Deliver me from drunks and movie people,” he said, shaking his head.
Gabi chuckled. She seemed to be enjoying Chuck’s sudden display of ire. Even Ty issued a brief snort, though Chuck didn’t know how to interpret it. Support for him, or Metcalf’s rebellion?
Chuck un-muted the phone. “Jerry, damn you. Wait for me. Don’t try to intercept that storm on your own.”
“We’ll follow the other chasers.”
“You won’t be able to keep up with them.” Chuck cast a glance at the radar image again. No question the cell had morphed into a nasty storm. The hook echo, hard evidence of a twister, appeared to be arcing toward the center of the storm. Metcalf had no idea how much danger he was about to blunder into.
“Listen to me,” Chuck yelled into the phone. “The twister’s becoming rain-wrapped. You’ll never see it ’til it’s on you. It’s too damn dangerous to chase without radar. Wait—”
“Look out!” Gabi screamed.
Chuck hadn’t seen it, hadn’t been alert. A tractor pulling onto the road in his lane. He jerked the SUV’s steering wheel to the left. Stood on the brakes. The tractor veered right. The Expedition shot past it, crossed the center line, careened onto the opposite shoulder, smacked into a barbed wire fence post.
Chuck, Gabi, and Ty, uninjured, scrambled from the SUV and examined the damage: a crumpled left front fender. The tractor driver, a sunburnt farmer wearing a John Deere ball cap, ran to where they stood. “Everyone okay?” he asked, breathless.
“We’re fine,” Chuck said. “Sorry, my fault. Didn’t see you.”
The farmer surveyed the situation. His gaze fell on the Expedition’s antennae, the darkening sky to the south. “Tornado chasers?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
The farmer shook his head, a barely perceptible movement. Tacit disapproval. “Well,” he said, “let’s see if we can get you back on the road.”
The bent metal of the fender rested against the tire. “Need to pull that away,” the farmer noted. “I’ve got some gloves on the tractor. Hold on.” He retrieved them and returned. Ty found a towel in the Expedition and wrapped it around his hands. Together, he and the tractor operator pulled the metal off the Michelin.
After they finished, the farmer placed his hands on his hips and took stock of the result. “Still looks ugly,” he proclaimed, “but you’ll be able to drive without shredding the tire.”
Chuck thanked him profusely.
The farmer nodded, slapped his gloves together, and jammed them into the back pocket of his jeans. “You folks be safe now. Lotta tractors, combines, and pokey pickups use these roads.” A friendly warning, a stern undertone. He smiled, touched the brim of his cap, and walked back to his tractor.
Chuck cranked up the Expedition and took off in pursuit of the renegade chasers. “Call Metcalf again,” he said to Gabi. She made the call and handed the phone to Chuck.
“Hey, what happened to you guys?” Metcalf asked. “We were talking, I heard someone yell, then nothing.”
“Almost hit a Deere,” Chuck said.
“In broad daylight? Well, shit. Better than a buffalo, I guess. You all right?”
“We’re fine. Where are you?”
“How in the hell should I know. Everyplace out here looks the same.”
“There must be something around. A sign. A crossroads. A landmark of some sort.”
“No—wait, hold on. We’re coming into some kind of a little hick town.”
“What’s it called?”
“Hicksville.”
“Come on, Jerry.”
“There aren’t any signs.”
“Ask someone.”
“Don’t see anybody. I’m guessin’ no one lives here.”
“Jerry!”
“It’s South Dakota. Nobody lives anyplace here.”
“Look for a water tower. There’s usually a water tower in these little towns. It’ll have a name on it.”
Chuck heard Metcalf conversing with someone in his Lincoln, one of the women on the Global-American crew, Julie or Jolie or something like that.
“We got it, Chuckie,” Metcalf said, “a water tower. We’re in, well, just passed through, Rippington.”
Chuck glanced at the map on his computer. “Wait for us,” he said.
“No can do, Charlie. We’re gonna bag this baby.”
“Wait, damn it!�
�
Metcalf broke the connection.
“Shit. He’s got a ten-mile lead on us now and he’s on a collision course with a supercell. Only, he doesn’t know it.” Then under his breath, but not quite, “Fucking moron.”
“Yea, verily,” Gabi said. “What do we do?”
Ty leaned forward and rested his arm on the back of Chuck’s seat. He didn’t say anything, just hung there, apparently waiting for Chuck to come up with a brilliant Plan B. Stormy, oblivious to all, snoozed on the seat beside Ty.
“Head ’em off at the pass,” Chuck said. At the next intersection he turned left, pressed the accelerator to the floor, and swept eastward.
Gabi tensed. “Please let there be no more tractors,” she muttered.
Ty seemed unfazed. “So what’s the plan, John Wayne?”
Chuck focused on the road, shifting his gaze from one shoulder to the other, watching for cross traffic . . . for combines and tractors. He didn’t even glance at the speedometer. He knew he was breaking the speed limit—one of those “yahoo” chasers the storm-chasing community abhors. But this could be a matter of life or death.
“I-29 is just a few miles east of here. We’ll jump on it, head south, probably twice as fast as Metcalf can, and when I think we’ve gone far enough, get off, barrel west, and try to intercept ’em.”
“Might work,” Ty acknowledged, “if we really knew where he was.”
“There’ll be some Kentucky windage and dead reckoning involved.”
“Anything I can do?” Gabi asked.
“Call Metcalf again in a little while, see if you can find out where he is.”
Chuck reached the Interstate several minutes later, accelerated, and watched the speedometer climb to between 80 and 90 mph. Northbound vehicles, headlights on, appeared like fireflies emerging from a dark cave as they fled the blackness cloaking the distant southern horizon—the supercell.
“Keep an eye out for cops,” Chuck said.
Gabi gazed at the midnight sky ahead. “I have a feeling most of them are otherwise occupied.”
Ty turned to peer out the rear window. “Not much traffic behind us.”
Stormy sat up, looked around, woofed softly, then lay down again.
“Try Metcalf now,” Chuck said to Gabi.
She did, but got no answer.
“Ty,” Chuck said, “how are you at reading maps and calculating intercept courses? Was that part of your Special Forces training?” An opportunity to engage his son.
“What do you need?” Ty asked, neither enthusiastic nor disinterested.
“I can’t drive, track the storm, and guess where Metcalf is all at the same time. If you could take a WAG at where we should get off the Interstate, run west, and try to reach him before he gets himself and crew into big trouble, it’d take a load off me.” Chuck spun the computer around so Ty could read it from the rear seat.
“Metcalf should be pressing south on that road roughly five miles west of the Interstate,” Chuck said. He pointed at the route. “Metcalf mentioned he passed through Rippington about ten minutes ago. Let’s assume he’s doing 45 mph. We’re moving twice that speed. The storm is that big red and purple splotch in the lower left of the screen. It’s heading northeast around 35 mph.”
“Crap,” Ty said. “If Jane has six apples and gives four to Dick, and he sells them for ten cents each, what color is Jane’s dress?”
“It’s not a trick question.” But Chuck could see his son already had attacked the problem, tracing his finger across the screen and plotting the projected track of the supercell toward the Interstate.
Gabi tried again to reach Metcalf on his cell phone. Still no response.
“Exit 94,” Ty said. “Best guess. Should be in just a couple of minutes. Jump off there and tear ass west. If Metcalf has stayed on the same highway he took through Rippington, we should be able to find him around a little town called—” he consulted the map again “—Colton.” He paused. “Maybe.”
Chuck exited where Ty suggested. The sky, now seething black and filled with crooked forks of lightning, seemed a warning in and of itself. Large raindrops splattered against the windshield of the Expedition. Chuck pulled the vehicle to the side of the road, stopped, and swiveled the computer back to where he could see it.
“Oh, boy,” he said. “This thing’s got a rain-wrapped tornado for sure.” The hook, no longer an appendage, had curled into the core of the storm. Hard to discern, even on radar. Chuck switched the image to velocity mode. The juxtaposition of red and green colors, velocity differentials, pinpointed the twister . . . at least to his experienced eye.
He wheeled the SUV back onto the road and barreled west. “Got ten minutes, at most. This is the most dangerous kind of tornado there is. Visually, you can’t spot it. Too much rain and hail. If Metcalf isn’t south of the storm by now, he’s gonna drive right into it.”
“I’ll bet he isn’t south of it, not yet,” Ty said, tightness in his voice.
“Then we’d damn well better find him in the next few minutes. Cuz after that, I’m gonna make like a sheep herder—we’re right in the twister’s bulls-eye.”
“Sheep herder?” Gabi said.
“Get the flock outta here,” Ty responded.
“Oh.” She didn’t seem to find it humorous.
The rain, without any preamble, increased to Niagara Falls intensity. Explosive bolts of electricity speared into the surrounding farmland as though the SUV were transiting some sort of vast, outdoor shooting gallery.
Chuck slowed the Expedition to a crawl. He leaned over the steering wheel trying to see through the translucent sheets of water coating the windshield. The wipers, even on full speed, proved no match for the cloudburst. Thunder reverberated almost continuously, an ear-splitting counterpoint to the tympanic crescendo of the downpour.
Suddenly, the shotgun detonation of hail intermingled with the rattle of the rain.
“Don’t like this,” Chuck said. “Time to go. Film-boy is on his own.” He rolled to a stop at a crossroad, preparing to turn and run. Maybe he’d waited too long already. He nosed the Expedition into the intersection. Headlights loomed out of the blackness to his right. He braked. Metcalf’s Lincoln and the camera rig rolled by in front of him heading due south, into the jaws of the storm.
Chuck laid on the horn as they passed. To no avail. He went after them, flashing his headlights. Hail thundered onto the roof of his vehicle. A crack spider-webbed across the windshield, joining the one incurred a few days earlier.
“Call ’em,” Chuck yelled over the din of the storm.
Gabi did. “He’s not answering,” she said, raising her voice.
He hung on the tail of the camera truck. Not exactly a high-speed pursuit. The rain and hail had slowed it to the pace of an O. J. Simpson chase. He risked a glance at the radar image. A minute or two to go—a minute or two before the tornado would cross the road they were on. He had to decide now. Let Metcalf discover his own fate? Or save him from his folly?
There are others besides Metcalf. This isn’t going to be the Glass Mountains again. He pulled out to pass the camera rig. Surely there wouldn’t be any traffic coming from the direction of the twister. The Expedition slewed from side to side, fighting for a grip on the watery-icy road. He drew alongside the cab of the truck. Almost slid into it. Laid on his horn again. Gabi signaled the driver, probably Boomie, to stop. He did.
Chuck drew abeam of Metcalf. Passed him. Snapped the steering wheel to the right, cutting in front of the Navigator. Metcalf swerved, sending the Lincoln into a sideways slide along the muddy shoulder of the road.
The rain and hail suddenly ceased, replaced by a deafening roar. Wind. Leveling the grassy fields. Snapping branches from a tiny copse of hardwoods. Propelling dirt and debris horizontally through the air.
Th
en the funnel. Black upon black. Wide. A wrecking machine churning across the prairie, devouring it, sweeping it clean of structures, topsoil, even life.
Chapter Nineteen
TUESDAY, MAY 7
CHUCK LEAPT FROM the Expedition and yelled at Gabi and Ty to get out. “Get Stormy. Get away from the car. Into the ditch.” He pointed at a shallow, water-soaked depression bordering the road.
Metcalf, Willie, and the two women riding with them exited the Lincoln. Metcalf screamed at Chuck. “What the fuck—” He saw the massive tornado and stopped, wide-eyed, his mouth open.
“In the ditch,” Chuck bellowed.
Metcalf and his companions didn’t hesitate. He belly-flopped into the water, a walrus in a water circus, followed by Willie and the ladies.
Boomie and his riders were already out of the camera truck, dashing for cover. Chuck swung his arms, motioning them to stay away from the truck, away from what could become—he didn’t know—a ten-ton missile?
A blast of wind smashed into him from the rear. He staggered and fell face down. He crawled toward the ditch, a jet-engine howl filling his ears. When he reached the depression, he buried his face in the damp grass. Then gunfire, rapid reports riding the wind. No, not gunfire. Trees rent by powerful gusts.
He turned his head, trying to get a view. Power flashes illuminated the blackness. Sheets of aluminum tumbled by, some getting briefly airborne. Shingles, like asphalt shrapnel, shot past. A tree toppled onto the camera rig. A branch from a pine, like a giant, errant javelin, lanced into a side window of Metcalf’s SUV.
As suddenly as it began, it was over. The wedge of blackness, disappearing into the rain again, swept away to the east. Only a fitful wind lingered in its wake. An electric odor, mixed with the essence of freshly split wood and muddy earth, filled the air.
Supercell Page 16