Supercell

by H W Buzz Bernard

  “Yes. As good as any setup—okay, better than any setup—we’ve had in the past two weeks. It could be a big deal. But we still have to be in the right place at the right time.”

  She nodded. “You’ll do it.”

  “You’ve got more faith in me than Metcalf the Magnificent does.”

  “Don’t forget, I’ve got a vested interest in this hunt, too.”

  He bobbed his head up and down. Slowly, almost wistfully it seemed. “Yeah. Sunday will be pretty much an all-or-nothing day. I have no doubt the bad guys have seen the models, too. Probably licking their chops.”

  “We’ll get ’em,” she said. “And you’ll get Metcalf his storm. Speaking of whom, where’s the rest of the crew today?”

  “Metcalf and his Merry Men, along with Ty, invaded a golf course again. I forget the name of it . . . somewhere near the airport. The two ladies schlepped off to the Great Plains Zoo.”

  “And here we are in an arboretum.” She looked around. “You know, it’s nice. Sioux Falls wouldn’t be a bad place to raise a family.”

  Chuck stared at her.

  “I meant that in a generic sense.”

  A Scarlet Tanager in low flight hurtled by in front of them.

  “I know you did,” Chuck said. “Not to pry, like you accused me of before, but did you ever—”

  “Consider a family?” She gazed up into the cloudless sky, as though she might find a signal from on-high: Answer the question or evade it. Well, his life wasn’t exactly hidden from her. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to level the playing field. Especially, she had to admit, when their relationship had crept across that diaphanous boundary between professional and personal. She hadn’t intended it to, but here they were, walking—well, not quite hand-in-hand, but almost—through the warm embrace of a spring day like a . . . couple. Spring, when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of? What? Gabriela Galina Mederios, a 40-something FBI agent? Or an EF-5 tornado? She stifled a self-deprecating laugh.

  “Too pointed a question?” Chuck asked.

  “No. But I guess since we’re . . . friends—”

  He took her hand. She didn’t resist.

  “Since we’re friends,” she continued, “I can open a door to you.”

  He didn’t respond, merely waited for her to go on. The piercing cry of a hawk mingled with the muted rustle of leaves from a nearby stand of oaks.

  “I was married once. When I was in my mid-20s. But I discovered pretty quickly I wasn’t cut out to be a stay-at-home wife. Fortunately, there were no kids. We divorced in less than two years.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In Boston. I think I told you before, I was working as an interpreter for the Federal District Court of Massachusetts at the time. But I wanted more. Adventure, I guess. I applied to the Bureau, was accepted, aced the training, and was assigned to the Mobile Field Office in the late ’90s.”

  “And then to New Haven, and then to Oklahoma City.”

  “You remembered.”

  “That’s about all you ever told me.”

  A group of children darted past them, laughing, yelling, full of energy. Elementary school kids on a field trip. They raced up the path ahead of Gabi and Chuck.

  “Maybe it’s time to reassess what I want out of life,” she said. Or is it too late?

  “Meaning?”

  She didn’t answer, not sure herself.

  He prodded her. “Second thoughts about not wanting kids?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s that. I’m not Soccer Mom material.”

  “Something else then? A secret?” He thought of Ty.

  She heard it in his voice, the standard accusation. If you’re a single female, older, especially if you carry a gun, you must be a dyke. “To dispel that notion,” she said, “let me tell you, I like men. I’ve had . . . affairs. I enjoy sex.” She blurted it out, immediately regretted it. “Sorry, too much information.” A surge of blood rushed to her head, her face undoubtedly flushing carmine.

  “No. It’s okay. We’re friends, remember? I’m your confidant now.”

  “The lady is a tramp,” she muttered.

  “Really? Because you want affection, companionship, recognition? Like everybody else?” He stopped walking and made her turn and look directly at him. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to live on a deserted island?”

  Deserted island. There it was. Easy to see now. Easy to understand what terrified her: living out her life alone.

  “I don’t want to be by myself,” she whispered.

  He pulled her to him.

  “Mercy hug?” she said, her words almost smothered in the folds of his shirt.

  “No. Don’t you think we both harbor the same fears?”

  A raucous conversation among a murder of crows interrupted the relative tranquility of the day, but the hubbub quickly subsided as the birds took flight on a low-level run to the opposite bank of the Big Sioux.

  “Maybe we should run away together after this is all over,” she said.

  “I may be broke.”

  She pulled away from him. “I’ll hire you as a gigolo.”

  “The equipment may not work.”

  “We need to find out.”

  He swiveled his head, scanning the area around him. Theatrically.

  “Not here, bozo,” she said. “And not until the Great Hunt is over.”

  They resumed walking. “Promise?” he said.

  “Typical man.”

  FRIDAY, MAY 10

  CHUCK GATHERED the chase team in a meeting room at the motel after breakfast.

  “We’re going to be moving,” he said. “We’ll head south today, spend tonight in Kansas City, then figure out tomorrow where to position ourselves for Sunday.” He checked his wristwatch. “We’ll shove off about ten-thirty.”

  “Still looking good?” Willie Weston, the second unit director, asked. An older man with a florid complexion and thinning hair, he seemed the only one of Metcalf’s crew that paid the man little deference.

  “Better than good,” Chuck said. “The Storm Prediction Center has already issued a high risk for Sunday.”

  “Meaning?” Metcalf, who’d been pacing behind the rest of the group seated around a large conference table, stopped and stood with his hands on his hips.

  “Meaning,” Chuck responded, “they’re virtually certain there’s going to be a major tornado outbreak. So certain, in fact, that this is the first time ever they’ve issued a high-threat outlook three days in advance. As a point of comparison, a high-risk category wasn’t posted until two days prior to the Dixie swarm of 2011.”

  “Was that when Alabama got clocked?” Willie asked.

  “Yeah,” Chuck said. “Most of the tornadoes, including four EF-5s, struck the Deep South, Alabama included, but there were reports of twisters from as far north as Upstate New York.”

  “I was in Tuscaloosa that day,” Willie said. “I remember it well. Damn scary. A lot of people were killed.”

  “Over 40 in Tuscaloosa alone,” Chuck said. “April 27th. All told, twisters claimed 316 lives that day, the greatest single-day toll on record since the mid-1920s.”

  Willie whistled softly. Stormy, who’d been lying near Chuck, lifted her head off her front paws and glanced around. Chuck petted her and she relaxed, laying her head back on her paws.

  Gabi, doing her magazine reporter schtick, scribbled something on a notepad and looked up. “Was that the biggest outbreak in history? I mean, like for number of tornadoes?” She snapped a piece of gum she’d been chewing.

  Chuck could barely keep from laughing. She snapped the gum again. She could have been an actress.

  “Yes. There were 175 confirmed twisters. Prior to that, the record holder was the ‘Super Outbreak’ of A
pril 1974 with, I think, 147 tornadoes. But seven of those were F-5s.”

  “Not EF-5s?” Gabi asked.

  “The EF classification wasn’t used until 2007. But an F-5 is roughly equivalent to an EF-5.”

  “Seven F-5s?” Metcalf asked. “Really?”

  “Four in the Midwest, three in Alabama.”

  “Maybe we should be chasing in Alabama.”

  “Not this time. SPC has narrowed the target region to eastern Oklahoma and southeast Kansas.”

  “And you concur with SPC’s outlook?” Willie asked.

  Chuck nodded.

  “Okay, a lot of tornadoes, but what about EF-4s and -5s?” Metcalf again. “That’s all I’m interested in.”

  “High risk and violent tornadoes go pretty much hand-in-hand,” Chuck answered.

  “Will it be dangerous?” Gabi asked. Still the feature writer.

  But maybe her question meant something else. At least to her and him. Will we have a shot, one last chance, at catching the bad guys—whoever has been using tornado damage as a cover for robbery and murder?

  Metcalf snorted as Gabi finished her question. He walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, Chuck thought, ever so slightly. “Not with our Great White Hunter here, honey,” Metcalf said. “He hasn’t come close to putting us in peril yet. At least not from a twister. Buffalo stampedes, giant hail, hidden swales. Yeah, he can ferret those out. But an EF-5? No way.”

  Chuck looked at the ceiling. Held his tongue. No, you Hollywood halfwit, only you can get us into trouble with a tornado. The memory of three days ago remained vivid: lying in a muddy ditch as a black wedge roared overhead. Debris flying. Transformers exploding. Trees snapping. The remaining camera truck almost crushed.

  He brought his gaze back to Gabi and Metcalf. “We’ll find what we’re looking for,” he said. A different meaning for each.

  But he hadn’t really answered Gabi’s question, Will it be dangerous? In truth, it would be. In any high-risk environment, especially one harboring the most violent storms on earth, there’s inherent peril. Still, they had a couple of advantages: their ability to monitor the situation, to understand what and where any threats would be developing; and their mobility, their ability to move and reposition themselves, or even run for their lives if they had to.

  The bad guys, of course, would have the same capabilities.

  Perhaps that was the reason a certain unease gnawed at him, like a determined rat chewing at the exterior of a home, willing itself entry. There could well be danger from two sources: one natural, one human.

  The natural one, the one spawned by nature, he could deal with.

  The human one . . . ? That’s where the real unpredictability lay.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  SUNDAY, MAY 11

  EARLY MORNING

  THE TEAM HAD traveled from Kansas City to Oklahoma City on Saturday, Chuck deciding Ok City would provide the best network of roads from which to launch the final hunt. They could move quickly north or south on I-35, east via I-40, or northeast on the Turner Turnpike.

  Although the sun hadn’t yet risen, Chuck had, several hours ago. With Stormy curled up in a corner and still sleeping, Chuck, using his laptop, reviewed the parameters for the impending tornado outbreak. He played devil’s advocate, attempting to poke holes in his own analyses, find weak points in his prognoses, tweak input values to render the outputs impotent. But no matter how hard he tried to force conditions to seem less threatening, he couldn’t.

  Low-level jet, mid-level jet, instability, wind shear, moisture—the values for all sat on the upper end of the scale. As far as the area under the gun, a moveable feast: Any location east of I-35 to the Missouri and Arkansas borders and south of I-70 to the Red River had the potential to become a killing ground.

  Already social media and television were ablaze with apocalyptic predictions: swarms of violent tornados, the greatest outbreak in history, maybe an EF-6. Bogus, of course. No one had any basis for such statements, but that didn’t stop the doomsday proclamations from being promulgated as gospel. Not that the fear factor needed to be ramped up in this part of the country, the traditional Tornado Alley. But even for veterans of legendary outbreaks and storm cellars, the day would be explosive and filled with peril.

  Chuck stood, his heart thumping like that of a marine about to storm a hostile beach. But was it danger or excitement that had released the floodgates of adrenalin that surged through his body? He certainly didn’t need any coffee this morning. Or beer.

  THE PAIN AWOKE her. Something loose inside her head and battering at her skull. A jackhammer trying to punch through bone. Gabi forced herself to sit up in bed. No, not today. Not today of all days. She staggered toward the bathroom in semi-darkness, gripping furniture, walls, anything to keep her upright as her world spun in a vicious kaleidoscope of painful lightning bolts arcing across her scalp. She dropped to her knees in front of the toilet bowl and vomited. It didn’t relieve her agony, only left her throat seared and raw.

  She crept back into the main room, groping for her purse, found it, and pawed through its contents until she felt the bottle of Treximet. She extracted a tablet and slammed it into her mouth. She lurched back to the bathroom, filled her hand with water, and downed the pill. But perhaps it was too late. The migraine might already be the victor, intent on holding her in agonizing imprisonment for the remainder of the day, if not longer.

  She crashed backward into her bed, her right arm draped across her forehead as if to ward off additional assaults of pain. Knowing she would have to wait two hours to take another dose if this first one didn’t do the job, she twisted her head to check the clock on the night stand. Just prior to six a.m.

  She didn’t like having to take the drug at all, especially when she was on the job. But without it, the pain would render her nonfunctional. She could only hope the medicine would work its magic. Experience had taught her that even with a single dose, however, because of Treximet’s side effects, she would be off her game. Lethargic, a bit slow to react, unable to focus. Still, she’d have to will herself to overcome those liabilities. As Chuck had pointed out the previous night, they were going into overtime in the game, all or nothing, winner take all; loser, zero. Sudden death.

  I want those bastards. I want . . . She drifted into blackness, a dark veil tugging her into a troubled sleep filled with flashes of light and dark shadows rippling over a barren landscape.

  IN A RUN-DOWN motel north of Stillwater, Clarence and Raleigh, arose early and pored over maps and discussions. Their two-star lodging had been chosen deliberately, to keep them separated, unnoticed, from the hordes of chasers—professional, semi-professional, amateur and clueless—gathering on the southern Plains in anticipation of what could prove to be an historic day.

  “I think,” Clarence said, his angular face contoured with an incipient smile, “this could turn out to be a bonanza.”

  Raleigh nodded. “Numerous tornadoes, that’s what the public statement out of SPC said.”

  “We just need to get lucky,” Clarence responded, “hope some of them hit homes, businesses . . . in up-scale neighborhoods. Not goddamn trailer parks or Mexican ghettos with clapped-out shotgun houses.”

  “Just . . . just so we don’t have to kill nobody,” Raleigh said, his voice low and hesitant, his eyes appearing like chocolate-colored boulder marbles behind his thick glasses.

  Clarence laid a hand on Raleigh’s shoulder. “Listen, bro’, I don’t like having to do that any better than you. But sometimes, it’s for the best. Sometimes you have to . . . neutralize a threat.” He squeezed Raleigh’s neck softly, almost lovingly. “Remember, nobody ever looked out for us. We gotta take care of ourselves. Each other. Right?” He cuffed Raleigh playfully on the head.

  “Right.” Raleigh sounded less than convinced.


  “Look, a couple of big scores today, maybe we can stand down for a while. Take a vacation down on the Baja. Tequila. Mexican senoritas. Okay?”

  “Senoritas with big casabas?”

  “You bet, bro’. Casabas grande.”

  Raleigh cracked a smile. Good to go.

  Clarence pulled up a map on his laptop. “We’re here,” he said, pointing. “SPC expects the initial supercells to develop here—” he pointed to an area just west of I-35 “—not too far from us.”

  Raleigh leaned in close, squinting, despite wearing glasses.

  “The storms’ll move east or east-northeast. There’re some decent-sized towns that could get clocked: Stillwater, Ponca City, Arkansas City. That would be best for us. Anyhow, we’ll sit tight right here until stuff starts to pop, probably mid-afternoon, then try to glom onto the biggest, baddest supercell and hope it spits out a wedge. If we get lucky, maybe a long-track tornado.”

  “Bonanza, you said?”

  “Oh, yeah. A lot of storms, a lot of targets. Eventually, bigger cities on the target list, too. Emporia, in Kansas. Bartlesville and Tulsa in Oklahoma.”

  Raleigh smiled, his pock-marked face looking like a happy moonscape.

  “Yep,” Clarence said, slapping his brother on the back, “somebody’s misfortune will be our good fortune. If we’re lucky, we’ll get multiple opportunities.”

  A gust of wind smacked into the motel room’s cheap door, rattling it like dry bones.

  EARLY AFTERNOON. Chuck and the chase team killed time in a Walmart Supercenter parking lot in Stillwater. Most of the team had trekked off to a nearby Applebee’s or Burger King for lunch, but now were back, wandering, gabbing, or talking and tweeting on their iPhones. Ty tossed a Frisbee for Stormy to chase. Metcalf paced around the lot by himself, now and then stopping by Chuck’s Expedition for a status update or mumbling about the fact they were still short a camera truck. “Thanks to you, it’s still in the Tulsa truck hospital,” he pointed out to Chuck.

  Chuck had stayed in the Expedition during lunch, munching on energy bars and sipping chocolate milk from Walmart while he studied the latest models on his laptop. Gabi, strangely silent, pale, and drained, had remained with Chuck. She’d barely acknowledged him earlier in the day; he had had little doubt what her problem was.