Storm Front

by John Sandford

  “What’d I do?”

  Virgil and Shrake walked all the way around the block to get back to their cars, taking no chance of being seen should Kaar step out in the yard.

  When Virgil was back in the truck, he did a U-turn and drove north toward I-94, then took the double-secret phone out from under his seat and poked “1.”

  Lincoln answered. “What?”

  “I think we need to confer,” Virgil said. “As you undoubtedly know by now, the stele exchange takes place sometime around nine o’clock tonight.”

  “We’re all over it.”

  “Are you watching the Hatchet and the driver, both?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I had a very bad night, and spent a lot of time thinking it all over, and so this morning I came up to the Cities and talked to Max Kaar’s landlord, who said he saw Max about fifteen minutes ago. Here, at his house. He said Kaar was here all day yesterday. What I’m saying is, after due consideration, I suspect that the driver is the Hatchet, and the man in the backseat is a decoy.”

  After a long silence, Lincoln said, “I will call you back in two minutes.”

  —

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, she called back and said, “You’re on a speaker here, so speak clearly. Please, please tell me that you didn’t arrest Kaar.”

  “Of course not,” Virgil said. “I was afraid he’d tip off the Hatchet, one way or another.”

  “Thank God. Now, we need to make sure that the landlord is okay, that he doesn’t somehow tip off Kaar that people were looking at him.”

  “I put the landlord in a cop’s car and he’s being transported back to the BCA right now. I’ve been told by an assistant attorney general that I can bust him on suspicion of sheltering a foreign terrorist and hold him incommunicado for a few days under the Patriot Act, but then he’d sue us, and every taxpayer in the State of Minnesota would have to send him money. What I’m hoping to do is to send him back home, with some coaching about how to handle Max the next time he sees him.”

  There was a rustle of voices in the background, and a name popped out: Morganthaler. Then there was more rustling, and finally Lincoln said, “A man named Joe Morganthaler will be at the BCA this afternoon. He will coach the landlord. All you need do is hold him until then.”

  “Good,” Virgil said.

  “I asked you to stay out of this, and now I’m ordering you: stay out of it. Stay out of it!”

  “You didn’t know that the Hatchet was the driver, did you? You would have trailed some chump to North Dakota or something while the real Hatchet was on his way back.”

  She clicked off. Virgil smiled at the phone, and put it back under the seat.

  —

  AT THE BCA, Virgil walked Swanson up the stairs and half-explained the situation to him. “We don’t want to arrest you, because you haven’t done anything wrong. On the other hand, we can arrest you, if we needed to, though you’d probably beat the charges. What we really want to do is put you back in your house, after you get some coaching on behavior.”

  “That’s good, I’ll do whatever you want,” Swanson said. “But my behavior—”

  “It’s not bad or good behavior, it’s how you react to Kaar the next time you see him, knowing that he might be cooperating with some really bad people. A guy is flying in just to talk to you, to give you a few moves.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Well, you just kind of sit around, I’ll get somebody to take you out to lunch, get you a tour of the crime lab upstairs . . .” Virgil outlined a few other entertainment possibilities as he walked Swanson to Davenport’s office. Davenport was banging on a computer when Virgil arrived and knocked on his office doorjamb.

  “Lucas, I’d like you to meet Larry Swanson.”

  —

  AFTER SWANSON was settled under the watchful eye of Davenport’s secretary, Virgil, Jenkins, Shrake, and Davenport gathered in Davenport’s office to decide what to do about the evening’s festivities.

  “Sure would be a lot easier if we could just pick up Jones before he got to the delivery site,” Davenport said.

  “It would be, but we don’t know what he’s driving, or where he’s hiding out, or how he plans to do this. I can guarantee it’ll be something tricky. I don’t think we have the time to figure all that out—but we will have the inside information on where it’s going to happen,” Virgil said.

  “How much notice will you get?”

  “As much as the people delivering the money, so we’ll all probably get there at once, wherever it is.”

  “But if they want to do it on a country road somewhere, in the dark, and they see six cars coming instead of two—”

  “Jones is a smart guy,” Virgil said. “He won’t want to be alone in the dark with Hezbollah.”

  “Take lots of guns,” Davenport said.

  “Gives me little goose bumps when you say things like that,” Jenkins said.

  —

  VIRGIL, JENKINS, AND SHRAKE went back to Mankato in a caravan of three cars. At Mankato, Jenkins and Shrake dumped their cars in the parking lot of a Happy Chef Restaurant, consolidated in Virgil’s car, and they all drove out in the countryside to visit Ma Nobles.

  Virgil had explained how Bauer and Ma had pledged to help him, and how Bauer had apparently already sold him out. “All we want to do with Ma is make sure that Jones isn’t at her place. And he might be. I don’t know what’s going on with those two, but something is.”

  “Does she go to church?” Jenkins asked.

  “Not so you’d notice. Besides, Jones doesn’t have a church. I don’t know if he ever did. He’s been a professor forever.”

  “I bet I know where he is,” Jenkins said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. College professors always go somewhere in the summer. You know, they’ve got to do research in Paris, London, and Rome, and they write it off their taxes. So, he did just what he did with this woman in Israel. He knows another guy who’s out of town right now, and he’s broken in there, and he’s driving that guy’s car.”

  Virgil thought about it for two seconds, then said, “Probably. Unless he’s at Ma’s. If we had just a little more time, we could go jack up the people at Gustavus, find out who’s out of town, start going door-to-door.”

  “You say we might not do much this afternoon. . . . Shrake and I could run up there, see what we can see,” Jenkins said.

  “It’s a plan,” Virgil said. “Let’s see what Ma has to say.”

  —

  THEY FOUND ROLF, Ma’s oldest boy, unloading salvage lumber from a Ford flatbed truck—dry salvage, that he said came from Elijah Jones’s old farmhouse—into the barn. Ma, he said, had gone out to the creek, but she had her cell phone with her. Another of Ma’s kids came out, a big kid, said his name was Tall Bear, and when Shrake asked him if he had a minister hiding under his bed, Tall Bear said, “No, but Mom said Virgil is busting her balls about him.”

  Virgil got Ma on the phone and told her that he was at her house, and if she didn’t mind, he and a couple of other cops were going to look under the beds, in the closets, and out in the barn.

  “Pisses me off, but go ahead,” Ma said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Virgil clicked off and said, “She says go ahead, which means we don’t have to.”

  “Maybe we ought to, just for form’s sake,” Jenkins said, looking up at the house.

  “Go ahead if you want,” Virgil said. “I’ll be out here.”

  Jenkins got Tall Bear to show him around, and Shrake and Virgil stood around watching Rolf unload lumber, and then Shrake took off his tie and said, “Well, shit, let’s give him a hand,” and so they did.

  When Ma got back, she looked at them unloading lumber, shook her wet head, and said, “Sometimes you people . . . Virgil . . .”


  —

  JENKINS HADN’T FOUND anything at all in the house, and on the way back to town, said, “Nice boy, that Tall Bear. He said Ma was out swimming in the creek.”

  “Boy, I’d bet that’d be a sight,” Shrake said. He looked casually over at Virgil and said, “Wouldn’t that be a sight, Virgie? Those nice little pink tits, she’s floating around on her back . . . Wait, what am I saying, ‘little’? Anyway, the sight—”

  “Yeah, that’d be a sight,” Virgil said.

  Shrake said to Jenkins, “Virgil agrees that would be a sight.”

  After a minute, Virgil said, “Fuck you,” but he didn’t laugh, though Jenkins and Shrake did. A lot.

  22

  Jenkins and Shrake spent the afternoon checking the homes of college professors who were believed to be traveling. They got the list after consulting with administrators at Gustavus Adolphus, and twice thought they might be on to something—the houses were occupied, one by the owners, who’d come back before they were expected, and one by the owners’ adult children, who’d stayed behind while their parents visited Budapest.

  At six o’clock, they gathered out back of Virgil’s house for brats and beer and tried to figure out what they’d be doing that evening. Virgil changed into cargo shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals for the occasion.

  “I’m mostly worried about Ma,” he said. “I don’t know exactly why she’s involved with Jones, but there’s something going on. Anyway, we’ll track her. She told me herself that Jones had something tricky planned for the exchange. I think I’ve got it all covered, but we’ll see.”

  “So we just sit on our asses until she starts moving?”

  “That’s about it,” Virgil said. “I gotta tell you—I’m a little suspicious about this whole auction thing. Why would he even bother to have it? But I have two different bidders telling me that’s what’s going to happen, so we’re going with it.”

  Shrake said, “I don’t worry so much about Ma. I worry more about this Mossad chick. From what you say, she wants to try out a little combat.”

  “I don’t want anybody to get shot, and I don’t doubt that she can shoot,” Virgil said. “If she pulls a gun, and if it’s safe to do, we might want to give her a little firepower demonstration.”

  Shrake brightened. “We talking tracers?”

  “You got some of those fast-ignition rounds?” Virgil asked.

  “Does a bear excrete in the woods?”

  “Have another brat,” said Virgil.

  Sitting around the grill, waiting for the trouble, reminded Virgil of his childhood, sitting around in lawn chairs on a hot summer Fourth of July, waiting for the light to die so the fireworks could start. He called Awad three times and Bauer another three, asking, “Anything yet?” and being told, “No,” just like when he was a kid asking, “Don’t you think it’s dark enough?”

  Just as when he was a kid, the light finally died. There was a storm front off to the west, and while they couldn’t yet hear the thunder, they could see the far-distant flashes of lightning; just like when he was a kid, waiting with suppressed excitement for the big winds and the storm. Virgil changed into combat gear—jeans and a T-shirt—and with the three of them feeling restless, they all got together and cleaned up Virgil’s kitchen, keeping an eye on Ma’s truck. At eight-fifteen, the truck started to move.

  “Let’s go,” said Shrake, and he and Jenkins jogged out to their vehicles and took off. Virgil watched them go, and then called Awad a fourth time: “Anything yet?”

  “Nothing yet. We are ready here.”

  “Raj, if you guys fuck with me . . .”

  “Virgil, my friend, we are in your hands, you are not in ours,” Awad said.

  “Keep that in mind,” Virgil said, feeling a little mean.

  —

  MA TURNED onto the road outside her house, and thought, What a great country night. She could hear frogs in the roadside ditches, smell the humidity mixed with the gravel dust. The western sky had gone black, with flicks of lightning moving closer, but to the east, the stars were bright as headlights.

  A gorgeous night, but pregnant with the feeling that something was about to happen. She’d had the feeling before—waiting out a tornado watch, or heading out to a roadhouse late at night, wondering what would happen in the next few hours. What?

  She also had the feeling of being watched, and instead of creeping her out, it made her feel secure. Virgil was out there somewhere, she thought.

  —

  JENKINS AND SHRAKE headed out into the countryside in their separate cars. Jenkins had the tablet tracker, kept one eye on that and one on the road. He had a radio plugged into his cigarette lighter, as did Shrake and Virgil, and they could use them like intercoms, with the press of the button.

  Ma started out going north from her house. Jenkins watched the illuminated dot crawl along a country road, then pause at a T intersection. He pushed the button on the radio and said, “She’s stopped.”

  Virgil: “Where?”

  Jenkins told him, and Virgil followed it on a Google map. “Unless she comes straight back, she’ll have to go east or west from there. If she goes east, she’ll be up against the river, and you guys will be right on top of her, and pretty quick,” he said.

  Jenkins said, “She’s moving again, she’s headed east. We’re taking 169.”

  They watched her for twenty minutes, zigzagging around the countryside, making stops, taking small roads apparently to check her back trail; eventually, apparently satisfied that she was alone, she ventured out on Highway 169 and turned south toward Jenkins and Shrake, who were less than a mile away when she made the turn.

  “We gotta get off,” Jenkins called to Shrake. “Right up ahead, whatever that is, right next to those cars.”

  They never found out what the business was, some kind of manufacturing plant, Jenkins thought. The parking lot was mostly empty, but a half-dozen cars sat facing what might have been the office area. He and Shrake pulled into the line of cars and killed their lights. Ma went by a half-minute later, and they gave her a half-mile, and then pulled out behind her.

  They all went south on the highway, until Ma slowed, then pulled into the parking lot at the same Perkins restaurant where Virgil and Ma had met the week before, to discuss lumber.

  Shrake, who was driving a pickup, pulled into the parking lot, rolled past Ma, and parked. Jenkins, in his Crown Vic, pulled off the highway, two hundred yards away, and killed his lights.

  —

  MA SAT in the parking lot for just over a minute, and Shrake called and told Virgil, “It’s another fake pickup. . . . She probably . . . Wait a minute.”

  As he was talking, a white Range Rover pulled in next to Ma’s red truck.

  “We’ve got that white Range Rover.”

  “Ah, jeez, I’m coming, I’m coming,” Virgil said. “That could be the Israeli Mossad with a gun.”

  Virgil was in his truck, waiting downtown for the nine o’clock phone call from Awad, and maybe Bauer, probably two miles and probably three or four minutes from the Perkins, if he put his foot on the floor, which he did.

  He had flashers, and he turned them on as he bolted away from the curb, onto Mulberry, across the bridge, onto the 169 ramp, and up the highway.

  As he rolled, Virgil shouted, “Keep talking to me . . . keep talking.”

  Shrake called to Jenkins, “You better get down here, something’s happening.”

  —

  MA PULLED into the Perkins parking lot, again with the feeling that something was about to happen. She didn’t trust Bauer, but then, she didn’t have to trust him. Just getting him here was part of her function. She pulled in, waited; another minute, and another pickup pulled in, went past her, parked, and a large man got out and walked into the restaurant. Through the lighted windows, she saw him talking to the cashier, and then fol
low her back to a booth, and take a menu.

  Fat raindrops began splattering off the tarmac, and off the windshield, drops the size of marbles, bringing with it the fresh-air smell of an incoming storm. She’d seen it on the television radar, earlier, and it wasn’t much, but it would rain hard for a while.

  Another minute, and Bauer pulled in, and up next to her driver’s side.

  Bauer got out of the far side of the Range Rover, holding a folded newspaper over his head to fend off the rain, and walked around, and she dropped her window and he asked, “You got it?”

  “I do,” she said. “Come on around to the other side.”

  “Let’s get it out where I can see it.”

  “It’ll be pouring in a minute—why don’t you get your camera, and we’ll just get in, and we’ll—” She saw movement in the Range Rover, through the glass on the passenger-side window. “Who’s that with you?”

  Bauer said, “Nobody.”

  Ma noticed that the window was down an inch or so, so that a person inside the Range Rover could hear their conversation.

  She said, “What’s this?” and reached for the keys, but as she started the engine, the passenger door on the Range Rover popped open and a woman jumped out and she had a gun in her hand and she pointed it at Ma’s face and the woman screamed, “The stone! Give us the stone!”

  Ma, suddenly over her head, shifted into reverse, but that wouldn’t work, and Bauer said, “The stone, the stone,” and to the woman, “Don’t point the gun! Don’t point the gun—”

  The woman screamed again and Ma shouted back, “Okay, okay, okay . . .”

  She reached into the foot well on the passenger seat and came up with the bowling bag. As she passed it out the window to the woman, the woman screamed at Bauer, “Drive! Drive!” Bauer hurried around the back of the Range Rover and climbed inside, and the woman got in, taking the gun with her.

  Ma said, “Bullshit,” and hit the gas, backing the truck around in a circle until it was directly behind the Range Rover. Out her driver’s-side window, she saw the big man who’d arrived in the pickup burst out of the restaurant, and at the same moment, a cop-looking car, like an old-model highway patrol car, bumped one wheel over a curb and banged into the parking lot, coming fast.