Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  “So they’re traveling by car. That was the most likely thing anyway,” Virgil said. “They won’t be here for at least a couple of hours.”

  They loaded into Bunch’s truck, Virgil in the backseat, and Virgil asked, “What kind of weapons you got? You got armor?”

  “We got armor, we got helmets, we got rifles. We’re good,” Jarlait said. “Goddamn, I been waiting for this. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “You’ve been waiting for it?”

  “I was in Vietnam when I was nineteen—coming up on forty years ago,” Jarlait said. “We’d send these patrols out, you could never find shit. I mean, it was their country. Those Vietcongs, man, they were country people, they knew their way around out there.” Jarlait turned with his arm over the seat so he could look at Virgil. “But up here, man—this is our jungle. I walk around in these woods every day of my life. Gettin’ some of those Vietcongs in here, it’s like a gift from God.”

  “I don’t think they’re Vietcong,” Bunch said.

  “Close enough,” Jarlait said.

  “Yeah, about the time you’re thinking you’re creeping around like a shadow, one of them is gonna jump up with a huntin’ knife and open up your old neck like a can of fruit juice,” Bunch said.

  Virgil was looking at a map. “Take a right. We need to get over to the country club.”

  “Nobody gonna creep up on me,” Jarlait said. “I’m doing the creeping.”

  THE DRIVEWAY into Knox’s place branched off Golf Course Road, running around humps and bogs for a half mile through a tunnel of tall overhanging pines down to the Rainy River. The night was dark as a coal sack, their headlights barely picking out the contours of the graveled driveway. Not a place to get into, or out of, quickly, not in the dark.

  “Weird place to build a cabin,” Bunch said. “You’re on the wrong side of the falls—if you were on the other side, you’d be two minutes out of Rainy Lake.”

  “He didn’t build it for the fishing,” Virgil said. “I think he built it so he and his pals can get in and out of Canada without disturbing anyone. The rumor is, he deals stolen Caterpillar equipment all over western Canada.”

  Knox’s house was a sprawling log cabin, built from two-foot-thick pine logs and fieldstone; the logs were maple-syrup brown in the headlights. The house sat fifty yards back from the water on a low rise, or swell, above the rest of the land. A pinkish sodium-vapor yard light, and another one down by a dock, provided the only ambient light. Across the water, Virgil could see another light reflecting off a roof on the Canadian side.

  “How far you think that is to the other side?” he asked Bunch as they parked. He was thinking about Warren, and how he’d been shot across the lake.

  “Two hundred and fifty yards?”

  “Further than that,” Jarlait said.

  Virgil fished his range finder out of the backpack and, when they stepped out of the truck, put them on the distant roof. “Huh.”

  “What is it?” Bunch asked.

  “Three-eighty from here to the house over there.”

  “Told you,” Jarlait said.

  “I meant that the water was two hundred yards.”

  “Yeah, bullshit . . .”

  Virgil said, “The main thing is, I think it’s too long to risk a shot. They’ll have to come in on this side—they can’t shoot from over there.”

  “I shot an elk at three-fifty,” Bunch said.

  “Guy’s a lot smaller than an elk . . . and there’re enough trees in the way that they can’t be sure they’d even get a shot. If they’re coming in, it’ll be on this side.”

  A MAN SPOKE in the dark: “Who are you guys?”

  He was so close, and so loud, that Virgil flinched—but he was still alive, so he said, “Virgil Flowers.”

  He saw movement, and the man stepped out of a line of trees. He was carrying an assault-style rifle and was wearing a head net and gloves. “I’m Sean Raines, I work for Carl. Better come in, we can work out what we’re gonna do.”

  Inside, the place was simply a luxury home, finished in maple and birch, with a sunken living room looking out across the river through a glass wall, and a television the size of Virgil’s living-room carpet. Raines was a compact man wearing jeans and a camouflage jacket. He peeled off the head net to reveal pale blue eyes and a knobby, rough-complected face; like a tough Kentucky hillbilly, Virgil thought.

  Virgil asked, “What about the windows?”

  “Can’t see in,” Raines said. “You can’t see it from this side, but they’re mirrored. How many guys you think are coming?”

  “Probably three,” Virgil said. “Two guys and a woman. They’ve got a rifle—hell, they probably got anything they want.”

  “They any good in the woods?”

  “Don’t know,” Virgil said.

  “It’s gonna be just us four?” Raines asked.

  “We got three more guys coming from Bemidji, oughta be here pretty quick.” As he said it, Virgil pulled his phone from his pocket and punched up the number he’d been given.

  He got an answer: “Paul Queenen.”

  “Paul, this is Virgil Flowers. Where are you guys?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes south of town on 71,” Queenen said.

  “Stay on 71 until you get to Country Club Road.”

  VIRGIL GAVE THEM instructions on getting in and then Raines took the three of them to an electronics room to look at the security system. “We got some deer around, so we keep the audio alarms off most the time, but I’ve got them set to beep us tonight. . . .”

  Knox had a dozen video cameras set out in the woods, feeding views into three small black-and-white monitors, all of which were a blank gray. “When you hear an alarm, you get a beep and an LED flashes on the area panel,” Raines said. He touched a ten-inch-long metal strip with a series of dark-red LEDs in numbered boxes. Above the LED strip was a map of Knox’s property, divided into numbered zones that corresponded to the LEDs. “When you get a flash, you can punch up the monitor and get a view of the area . . . you almost always see a deer, though we’ve had bears going through. Sometimes you don’t see anything because they’re out of range of the camera.”

  “But in the dark like this . . .”

  “The cameras see into the infrared, and there are infrared lights mounted with the cameras,” Raines said. He reached over to another numbered panel, full of keyboard-style numbered buttons, and tapped On. One of the monitors flickered and a black-and-white image came up: trees, in harsh outline.

  “You’ll notice that there isn’t as much brush as you’d expect—Carl keeps it trimmed out pretty good. The trees are bigger than you’d expect, because he has them thinned. He wants it to look sorta normal, but when you get into it, you can see a lot further than if it was just untouched woods.”

  “How does it pick up movement?” Bunch asked. “Radar?”

  “They’re dual-mode—microwave and infrared to pick up body heat.”

  Raines had worked through a defensive setup. “Whoever’s covering the system has to know where our guys are at. You don’t want to be turning on the lights if you don’t have to, because you’ve got your own guys moving around. If somebody’s coming in with high-end night-vision goggles, some of those can see into the infrared. It’d be like turning on a floodlight for them.”

  Virgil looked at his watch. “I don’t think they’ll get here until daylight anyway,” he said. “Not unless they flew, and then they’d still have to drive.”

  They got a beep then, and Raines switched one of the monitor views, and they saw a fuzzy heat-blob moving across the screen. “It’s small—probably a doe,” he said. He flicked on the infrared lights and they saw the doe, wandering undisturbed through the trees.

  “Hell of a system,” Virgil said.

  TWO OR THREE minutes later, as they were headed back to the living room, the security system beeped again and they went back to look at the monitors. “Car coming in,” Raines said. He touched one of the
monitors and they saw a truck coming toward them, down the driveway.

  “Bemidji,” Bunch said.

  “We oughta put the trucks in the garage—too many of them, they’ll get worried. If they spot them,” Jarlait said.

  THE THREE AGENTS from Bemidji—Paul Queenen, Chuck Whiting, Larry McDonald—brought assault rifles, armor, and radios. With the handsets that Virgil already had, there’d be enough for everyone. They gathered in Knox’s den, where he had a Macintosh computer with a thirty-inch video display, and Virgil called up Google Earth and put a satellite view of Knox’s property on the screen.

  “Overall, I see two possibilities,” Virgil said, touching the screen. “First, they come in by water, which wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve looked at this picture, and they probably have. They could grab a boat, or bring one—a canoe or a jon boat—throw it in the water, and drift right along the shore. They’d probably come in from the south, but they could come in from either direction, so we have to watch both. The second possibility is that all they’ve got is a car, or a truck, and they come in from the highway . . . but they won’t want to park in the open, so they’ll have to ditch the truck here or here.”

  When he finished, one of the Bemidji agents said, “You know, there’re only two highways in here.” He tapped the screen. “If you put roadblocks here and here . . . they gotta hit them. If you had some guys hiding off-road, south of the roadblocks, and if somebody turned and ran, they could block them south. Trap them.”

  “I thought of that,” Virgil said. “One problem: we’d have some dead cops. These people have no reason not to fight. They’ve already killed seven or eight people, they’re here illegally, and they could be considered spies. Probably would be. If we catch them, they’ll go away forever. So if they’re suddenly jumped by a roadblock, my feeling is that they’d go for it—they’d try to shoot their way through. And they might have any kind of weapons.

  “The other problem is, we’ve got Canada here.” Virgil traced the border on the satellite view. “They could literally swim to a country where we have no authority, if they could shoot their way to the river. If they get to Canada, I have a feeling we lose them.”

  “Probably would,” another of the agents said. “Their crimes are federal capital crimes. Canada wouldn’t extradite. We’d have to make some weird kind of deal. I don’t think the politicians would go for it—let Canada tell us what we could do.”

  “One more thing,” Virgil said. “They’ve been working this operation for a year. They’re not stupid; they’ll have alternative plans. I thought about things like, what if they ditched all their weapons down in the Cities and flew into Fort Frances? They walk through Canadian customs, pick up a prepositioned weapons cache and a boat over there, cross the river, hit Knox, cross back, and head out.”

  They all looked at the map, then Jarlait chuckled and said, “Wish you’d mentioned that sooner. If they did that, they could be here right now.”

  “No. Not on the alarm system,” Raines said. “We’ll see them coming—might only have a minute or two, but we’ll see them.”

  “Maybe they’ve got invisibility cloaks,” Bunch said.

  Raines said, “Well, then we’re fucked.”

  VIRGIL SAT staring at the map until Bunch prodded him and asked, “What do we do, boss?”

  Virgil said, “Our biggest problem is that we don’t know the territory, and we don’t have time to learn it. Can’t see in the woods, but we can’t help it, because if they’re coming at all, they’re coming tonight. By tomorrow, they’ve got to figure they’ll be all over the media. That Knox will know that they’re coming and will get out. And I’ve set them up to think that I don’t know where this house is . . . if they’re still monitoring my truck. So: I think they’ll come in fast, but there aren’t many of them.”

  He looked at Jarlait and Bunch. “I want you two guys at the corners of the property, on the river, looking for boats.” He touched the two corners on the video map. “I want you deep under cover, I want you to literally find a hole, and then, not move. Nothing sticking up but your head. They’ve got starlight scopes and night-vision glasses. If they come in, I just want a warning so we can reposition everybody else.”

  To the Bemidji guys: “I want you three on the land side.” He pointed at the video display: “Here, here, and here.”

  “I want everybody on the ground, hidden. Your main job will be to spot these guys so we can build a trap as they come in.”

  “You mean, ambush them,” Whiting said.

  Virgil nodded. “That’s what it comes to. I’m going to ask Sean to monitor the security system. If anybody sees or hears anything, you call on the radio. Bunch of clicks and your name. That’s all. When they come in, you let them past and then get ready to close from the back. Sean will vector you in behind them. If they come in spread out, that means they’ll be hooked up by radio. If they’re operating as a sniper team, I expect at least two will come together, a spotter and a shooter. Gotta watch out for the third one.

  “If they come in from the river, I want the land-side guys to rally down here on the house; if they come in from the land-side, I want Jarlait and Bunch to rally up to the house,” Virgil said. “I’ll be here with Sean until something pops up, and then I’ll go out to face them. By staying here, I can go in any direction.”

  “And stay out of the mosquitoes,” Bunch said.

  “And drink beer and watch TV,” Virgil said. He looked at his watch. “I want to get us out and get spotted right now. So get armored up, get warm, get your head nets on, get plugged into the radios. Find a comfortable place to lie down and then check in with us.”

  Raines said, “Best if it’s in a ditch or low spot, someplace that will minimize your heat signature, in case they have infrared imaging capability. Get low.”

  “If everything works perfectly, if they come in and we drop the net around them, I’ll try to talk to them,” Virgil said. “If they make a run for it, well, stay down and make sure you know what you’re shooting at. Anybody running has got to be them. Got that? Nobody runs. We don’t want any of us shot by any of us.”

  He looked around. “If anybody gets hurt, call it in if you can, and we’ll make you the first priority. First priority is ‘Don’t get hurt.’ Catching these people is the second priority, okay? Don’t get your ass shot.”

  He turned to Raines. “You know where the hospital is?”

  Raines nodded.

  “Then you’re in charge of making the hospital run if anybody gets knocked down. Them or us,” Virgil said. “One thing to remember is, they’re coming in here expecting to be on the offensive. They’ve got to come to us. We don’t have to maneuver; we just have to snap the trap. Okay? So let’s put your armor on and get out there.”

  To Raines: “One more thing: if there’s shooting, and I can’t do it, I want you to call the sheriff’s office and tell them what’s up. Tell them that it’s a BCA operation. We don’t want any locals to come crashing through and get mixed up with us, or with the Vietnamese.”

  VIRGIL AND Paul Queenen moved the BCA truck into the garage, and on the way back in, Queenen looked up at the overcast sky and asked, “What if they don’t come in?”

  “Then they don’t. But if they’re monitoring my truck, and they should be, it’s been like the ace in their hand . . . then they know we’ve tumbled to them. They know when people start watching TV, everybody in the state will be looking for them. If they don’t move tonight, they’ll have to give it up.” Virgil looked at his watch again. “They’ve got to be getting close.”

  “If they come.”

  “They will,” Virgil said. “I talked to the woman a couple days ago. Mai—Hoa. Told her I didn’t know where Knox is hiding. I said it again tonight, in the truck. So—this is their last chance.”

  “Why did you tell her that? Did you already know she was in it?”

  “No.” Virgil thought about it for a minute, then said, “I don’t know why I told her that.”


  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, all five men were at their stands. All five were deer hunters, they were all camouflaged and armored and netted and settled in, earbuds operating.

  Virgil piled his armor in the hallway leading to the electronics room. He slipped into a soft camo turkey-hunter’s jacket, put a magazine in each of four separate pockets so they wouldn’t rattle, another one seated in the rifle, a shell jacked into the chamber. He jumped up and down a few times to make sure that nothing rattled, then piled the jacket and rifle next to the armor and walked around the house turning off lights.

  When the place was dark, he pulled a couple of cushions off the couch in the living room, got a towel from the kitchen, and carried them to the electronics room, where Raines was sitting in a dimmed-down light, watching the monitors.

  Virgil tossed the cushions on the floor, lay down on them, put the towel across his eyes, got out the second bottle of Pepsi, took a sip. “Everybody spotted?”

  “Yes. I can barely see them, even on the infrared. They got themselves some holes.”

  A moment of silence, then Virgil asked, “How’d you get this job?”

  Raines said, “Got out of the Crotch, couldn’t get a job, so a guy got me a shot as a doorman at a club. You know. I met some guys doing security for rock stars, thought I could do that, and that’s what I did.”

  “What rock stars do you know?”

  He shrugged again. “Ah, you know. I don’t know any of them, but I’ve ridden around with most of them one time or another. I’m the guy who gets out of the limo first.”

  “What’d you do in the Crotch?”

  “Rifleman, mostly—though the last year I spent mostly on shore patrol.”

  “Yeah? I was an MP,” Virgil said.

  “Tell you what,” Raines said. “I was in Iraq One. I did a lot more fighting as an SP than I ever did in Iraq. Especially those fuckin’ squids, man. When the fleet is in, Jesus Christ, you just don’t want to be there.”