by Jeremy Brown
“Must have gotten a call from town,” Kershaw said.
He moved the bundled camouflage parka away from his feet so he could turn sideways and get ready to lean out the window with the AR.
“Wait,” Bruder said.
There wasn’t a lot of leg room in the back row, but he managed to slump down in the corner between the seat and door, below his open window, angled so he was looking past Rison and out the driver’s door.
“You do the same,” he told Kershaw.
Kershaw did, and ended up looking past Connelly and out the front passenger window.
Bruder set the AR on his knees and lifted them so the barrel followed his line of sight.
“Half a mile,” Rison said. “It’s a pickup truck, lifted for off-road.”
He glanced into the back seat and looked straight down Bruder’s rifle.
“Shit!”
“Just keep your chin tucked in,” Bruder said.
Then, to Kershaw: “You good?”
Kershaw peered through the holographic sight, past Connelly and out his window.
“As long as Connelly doesn’t stick his tongue out.”
“I don’t like this one bit,” Connelly said.
Bruder said, “If either one of you has to move, keep it close to your body.”
Connelly moved his pistol to his left hand and set it in his lap.
“What’s the point of hiding? They have to know this is the right truck.”
“They’re looking for four guys,” Bruder said. “Anything that causes hesitation, or doubt—even for a few seconds—is good for us.”
Rison said, “Quarter mile. Looks like two guys in the cab. They’re waving. I can stop now, we all jump out and put a magazine into the cab. Problem solved.”
Bruder sat up long enough to take a look.
“Are you sure they’re even Romanians?”
Rison paused.
“No.”
“Then we do it this way until we know.”
He grabbed the camouflage poncho and spread it over himself and Kershaw like a tarp. He wedged himself back into the corner and adjusted the poncho, so the only gap was at the end of their rifles.
He told Rison, “Go around them if you can.”
“I can’t. They’re taking up the whole road.”
“Anybody coming behind?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Then stop. Whatever this is, let’s get it over with.”
Bruder’s view through the slit was of Rison, the window, and blue sky beyond, so it was hard to tell exactly how fast they were going.
But he felt the truck slow down and heard the engine noise drop.
When the truck rocked back and settled, he could hear the other truck getting closer.
A man yelled, “Turn the truck off! Show me the keys!”
Romanians?
Rison said, “What? Why?”
“Do it, motherfucker!”
Romanians.
Rison pulled the keys out and showed them.
The man said, “Throw them on the ground!”
“What’s going on, man?”
“Throw them out or we shoot you!”
Rison tossed them out the window.
Connelly kept a narration going, his voice low and tight. To Bruder it sounded like he was trying not to move his lips.
“Two guys, I think. Truck angled in front of us, windshield glare. Driver has pistol on us.”
The man in the truck said, “Keep your hands up! Show me hands!”
Rison lifted his hands and spread the fingers out.
The man in the truck said, “Where are the other two?”
Rison said, “Huh?”
“There are four of you!”
“What?”
The man in the truck said, “Where are the rest of you? In the back?”
“Buddy, take a minute and tell me what’s going on, please. Are you guys cops, or what?”
Bruder heard the man talking but couldn’t make out any words.
Connelly said, “Passenger door open. He’s getting out. Driver still in, gun on Rison. Shit. Shit. shit.”
Bruder waited, then whispered, “What?”
“I know the passenger. Grigore. The one from Len’s, busted his nose. Coming this way, has a shotgun on me.”
Bruder stared through the slit, waiting for something to enter the blue sky outside Rison’s window.
He heard footsteps outside his door, someone coming closer along the shoulder.
Then, closer than he’d expected a man barked a laugh.
“Hey, it’s the singer boy! The Hungarian!”
The driver asked something in Romanian and Grigore answered him, then said, “Hey boy, where is your girlfriend? You going to her place? Was it her idea to steal our money?”
Connelly stayed quiet.
Grigore yelled to the truck in Romanian.
Rison said, “Who are you calling?”
Letting Bruder and Kershaw know the man had his phone out.
Grigore said, “Shut your mouth. Singer boy, I’m going to open your door. Then you get out here and keep your hands up and kneel in the grass. If you do anything other than that, I’ll blow your guts out and let you die slow. Got it?”
“Got it,” Connelly said.
Bruder heard boots scraping on asphalt.
“Ah, is that our money in the back—”
Kershaw’s shot was deafening inside the truck, even with the suppressor.
Bruder yanked the poncho back and sat up in the same motion, pushing the AR into the front seat and searching for his target.
The man was behind the wheel of the pickup, which sat a little higher than the DOT truck because of its off-road package.
His pickup idled at an angle across the road with the front bumper near Rison’s door and the bed pointed away at the two o’clock position.
The driver had a pistol in his right hand, pointed at Rison, and a phone in his left.
He was using his thumb to swipe the screen.
His mouth was open, and his eyes were wide from the sudden gunshot, and Bruder fired just above the steering wheel, through the windshield. The bullet went into the man’s open mouth and scattered the back of his head inside the truck.
Rison scrambled out the driver’s door and kept his Glock aimed at the pickup until he got close enough to peek inside, then he stuck the gun in his belt and clamped both hands over his ears.
“Fuck! I’m deaf!”
Bruder opened his door and looked down at Grigore. His eyes were open and dull. He had a hole next to his nose and his head was misshapen.
Bruder walked around the front of the truck and met Kershaw next to the pickup.
After a glance inside he opened the door and found the phone on the seat near the driver’s left leg.
The screen showed a list of recent calls, which the driver had been scrolling through when Bruder shot him.
“No call,” Bruder said.
He opened the message app and saw the most recent conversation was a group text with eight people, all of them represented by one or two letters.
B
Cl
G
P
R
Like that.
The messages were in a foreign language.
He showed the screen to Kershaw and said, “Romanian?”
Kershaw peered at the phone.
“If it isn’t, we’re in a bigger mess than we thought. Here, let me see.”
He took it and scrolled through the conversation while Bruder looked in the truck for anything useful.
Kershaw said, “Apparently the Romanian word for Chicago is Chicago.”
Bruder stood up, suddenly wary.
“When was this? They talking about the delivery schedule?”
“No, it was…an hour ago. So after we made the grab.”
Now Bruder was concerned.
“What else about Chicago?”
“Hold on.”
; He fiddled around until Bruder said, “What are you doing?”
“Copying and pasting into a translator site. It won’t be conversational, but we’ll get the gist. And there are some numbers, which is good. Don’t need to translate those.”
He looked around at the flat fields.
“They get really good service out here.”
Every second they stayed with the truck and phone made Bruder feel tighter, but he let Kershaw work.
Kershaw said, “Okay, something like, ‘Chicago sending package, arrive 5-6.”
“Who wrote that?”
Kershaw went back to the messages.
“R.”
“Razvan,” Bruder said. “A package from Chicago.”
“Arriving between five and six. O’clock, I assume.”
Bruder checked his watch. It was getting close to one in the afternoon.
He pointed at the phone.
“Toss that.”
It would be helpful to keep track of the conversation, but it would also pinpoint the location of whoever held it.
Kershaw tossed it back into the cab and shut the door.
Bruder went back to Grigore’s body.
Connelly had a finger in his left ear and was opening and closing his jaw.
Bruder asked him, “Can you hear?”
“Barely. Scared the shit out of me.”
Bruder raised his voice and addressed everyone.
“Listen up. The Romanians have reinforcements coming from Chicago. Arrival time between five and six, tonight. We need to be gone before then.”
Then he told Connelly, “Get out here and give me a hand. He’s going in the truck bed.”
Connelly got out and they carried Grigore’s body to the pickup.
The bed had no tailgate, just an open end, and they swung the body in and shoved it toward the cab.
Bruder reached in the driver’s window and shifted the truck into Drive. It rolled forward and off the asphalt into the scrub grass before bumping into the field, which had some freshly turned furrows but those weren’t enough to stop the pickup’s knobby tires and high idle.
Rison scooped his keys off the asphalt and everyone got back into the DOT truck. The windshield was spiderwebbed around the bullet hole but still usable.
“Still Nora’s?” Rison said.
Bruder tapped Connelly.
“You’ve been there. How’s it look for a standoff?”
“Uh, not great.”
Bruder shrugged.
“It’s all we got. Let’s go.”
They drove away, leaving the pickup to trundle away across the field until it came across something to make it stop, or not.
They pulled into Nora’s driveway and everyone saw her pacing on the wraparound porch. She wore a thick maroon and cream sweater jacket and had her arms wrapped across her ribs.
When she saw the strange truck turning in she stopped and stared.
“Ah, man,” Connelly said. “Ah shit.”
“This could be a good thing,” Rison said.
Connelly looked at him, waiting for the revelation.
Rison said, “Well, right now she thinks you’re a former marketing asshole who scrapes up gas money by playing shitty songs in dinky town bars. When she finds out you’re actually a criminal asshole who makes millions of dollars through strong arm robbery…it might be an upgrade.”
“You’re a big help,” Connelly said.
Bruder looked out his window at the road they’d come down.
So far, no other vehicles were in sight.
The other side of the road was a harvested field of something that hadn’t been corn—soybeans, maybe—and he could see a tree line way off in the distance and, beyond that, hints of barns and silos and smaller structures that were probably houses.
The sight lines out here were troublesome.
If he could see those buildings, they could see Nora’s house.
And the white truck pulling in.
He told Rison, “Go around the house, to the metal barns back there.”
“Let me out by the porch,” Connelly said.
“No,” Bruder said.
“I need to talk to her. Smooth this out.”
“Sure. We’ll help.”
Connelly didn’t say anything, but it was clear he didn’t want the assistance.
Rison drove between the house and the old barn with remnants of red.
Nora was at the top of the stairs now, waiting for the truck to stop. When it kept going, she leaned down to peer through the windows and spotted Connelly in the passenger seat.
She unwrapped her arms and held them out to her sides: What the hell?
Connelly waved and Rison held up a finger to let her know they’d be a minute.
As they approached the metal barns Bruder said, “Is there room in there for the truck?”
“No,” Connelly said, with attitude. “They’re jammed with big-ass machines. Combines and hopper trailers and tractors. And everything you need to keep them running. Plus the doors are locked.”
Rison snorted a laugh at that, locked doors being the least of their concerns at the moment.
He took the truck around the corner of the barn and reached for the keys.
“Hold on,” Bruder said.
He got out and looked around.
Nothing but fields and trees off in the distance.
He still didn’t like the wide open view, but at least no one would spot the truck from the road or across it. The metal barns were like a set of medium-sized warehouses.
He told Rison, “Okay.”
They all got out and Bruder pulled his balaclava up over his nose and mouth, hiding everything except a small slit for his eyes.
Kershaw and Rison did the same.
Connelly watched them, then looked at the ARs slung across the chests of Bruder and Kershaw.
Rison still had his pistol out.
Connelly said, “Is all of…this...necessary?”
“She’s already seen our faces once,” Bruder said. “We don’t need her making any connections.”
“Then just stay here with the truck.”
Bruder shook his head.
“We all need to have a chat.”
He turned and walked around the corner to meet Nora.
Nora was halfway across the crushed concrete in front of the barns.
When Bruder walked around the corner she stopped, her eyes wide and moving to the others around him.
Three large men in black masks and heavy boots and thick outdoor work clothes, long guns slung across their chests and pistols sticking out. As a group, they looked like they should have been assaulting a hostage situation or protecting the ambassador to Serbia while he crossed a tarmac.
It was probably an alarming sight.
Then Connelly came around the corner with no mask and no gun and Nora saw him and blinked.
“Hey,” he said.
Nora’s eyes got wider for a moment, then narrowed.
She asked Connelly, “What the hell have you done?”
“I’m pretty sure you can figure it out.”
“Did you…did you take their money?”
“It’s not theirs,” Bruder said. “It’s ours.”
Nora frowned at him.
“Who are you?”
Bruder tilted his head toward Connelly.
“A friend of his.”
“Did you mess with their armored truck? Are you guys the reason we’re all being terrorized right now?”
“To be fair,” Connelly said, “you were all being terrorized before. It was just, you know. Low-grade.”
Nora’s eyes were bright with furious tears.
“Do you know they stuck a gun in Helen’s face? In front of her husband?”
Kershaw looked at Connelly and asked, “Who’s Helen?”
Connelly shrugged, helpless.
“They have the entire town locked down,” Nora said. “And here I was, worried about what they might do to you becau
se you were trying to come see me. To help me.”
“I am trying to help you,” Connelly said.
Nora just shook her head.
“You have no idea what you’ve done. You’ve committed suicide, Adam.”
She looked around at the barns and fields and open sky, coming to conclusions.
“And I think, because you came here…I think you’ve killed me too.”
Bruder waited for Connelly to say something, to calm her down, but he was stuck.
Speechless, for once.
Bruder said, “Let’s go inside and talk this through. You’re cold.”
“I’m fine,” Nora said, “and you’re not stepping foot inside my house. Get back in the truck and leave.”
“That’s not happening.”
Bruder glanced at the massive steel barns with their billboard-sized doors, closed and locked. Then he looked at the older barn near the house.
“We’ll go in there. Out of sight, but I bet we can see through some cracks. Watch the road and listen for vehicles while we talk.”
“No,” Nora said. “And talk about what?”
“What happens next.”
“I know what happens next. You get back in the truck and go away.”
“We already talked about that,” Bruder said. “Where’s your gun?”
She twitched a hand toward the right pocket of her sweater, where Bruder had already spotted something heavy pulling the fabric down.
“You’re not getting my gun,” she said.
“I don’t want it. I just want to know where it is. Leave it in there unless one of us says it’s okay to take it out.”
She glared at him and seemed like she might pull the Sig out just to prove a point.
“I wouldn’t,” Bruder said. “Brandishing is illegal in Iowa.”
He stepped past her toward the old barn.
Chapter Fifteen
The barn smelled like a fire waiting to happen—straw and dry wood and dust.
The early afternoon sun splayed through cracks in and between the planks, highlighting the motes drifting around.
There was a large open area on the ground floor. The only thing taking up space was a rusty contraption about the size of a car with a metal seat and discs and tines that looked like it used to get dragged behind a horse.
Above, an empty loft wrapped the four walls with a rectangular hole in the middle for moving things up and down. A rough wooden ladder that was part of the structure led to the loft, and while the high ground was attractive, the few remaining planks looked ready to break from a heavy sigh.