Six Seconds

69

Highway 200, eastbound for Cold Butte, Montana

Rick Mofina

Six Seconds

“Did the number come up? Call back,” Graham said.

Maggie checked. No number. She hit the call-back feature, got a busy signal. Graham passed her his notebook with the DMV info for Burt Russell, pointing. “Try this number.”

The line rang, then an automated response. The number was not in service. Maggie tried the school. That line was busy.

“Damn, damn, damn!” she said.

The rental’s engine roared as Graham wheeled hard into the right shoulder. The line of jammed cars, vans, RVs, charter buses, pickups blurred by them as he raced for nearly a mile before a siren sounded.

A Montana Highway Patrol car appeared in his rearview mirror, light bar flashing. In the distance behind it, Graham saw a white sedan following the police car. Traffic cops hated queue jumpers and the lemming effect they inspired.

At a junction just ahead, several Montana Highway Patrol cars had established a choke point where patrol men were diverting some traffic to secondary roads. One spoke into his shoulder mike, stepped in Graham’s path and leveled a finger at him.

Graham stopped.

Three patrolmen, including the one in pursuit, un strapped their holsters as they approached, ordering Graham and Maggie to put their hands on the dash. Far behind, the white sedan slipped unnoticed back into the traffic line.

Graham cooperated as they studied his badge and Maggie’s California license.

Moe Holman, the most senior patrolman and a chronic gum-chewer who’d worked the border at Coutts and Sweetgrass, recognized Graham from years gone by. He’d handle it, he told the others and waved Graham out, taking him aside.

“Hi, Moe.”

The men shook hands.

“Key ripes, Daniel, what the hell’re you doing? Your passenger’s a long way from home and you’ve got no authority to drive like a sinner. The pope’s not going to save you from my ticket.”

Graham explained that he and Maggie just needed to get to an address in Cold Butte to check on her boy; it was a pressing domestic matter related to Graham’s multiple death case, and that Graham had alerted the FBI in Billings.

Gum-snapping, Holman nodded between traffic calls on his radio. The last thing his crew needed now was more work. The pope deal had them stretched. He let Graham go ahead with a warning, radioed his okay to troopers down the line.

“Drive safely, Daniel. Got a lot of folks filled with the spirit today.”

Traffic moved faster as Graham and Maggie left the junction, continuing east for Lone Tree along the two-lane highway that sliced across Montana’s midway point.

Maggie fought tears as she tried to reconnect with Logan and the school. Her fingers shook each time she pressed the numbers. Phone service was sporadic, strained by the heavy call volume related to the visit.

No luck.

She kept trying.

Graham made good time swinging into the oncom ing lane, passing when it was clear. At a rare, sweeping curve, he fell into line among several slow-moving rigs when a car blazed by them at high speed.

A white sedan.

“That idiot’s going way too fast.” Graham shook his head. “We’re almost there.”

He handed Maggie detailed maps for Cold Butte and began discussing a plan. She touched one finger on the school, one on Crystal Creek Road then jumped in her seat as the rig ahead blasted its air horn.

“Oh, God!”

In an instant the rig’s brake lights glowed, its trailer veered to the shoulder, stones peppered the car; the truck bucked, something emerged at terrifying speed through smoking rubber.

Something bearing down directly on Graham and Maggie!

Maggie covered her face for the impact as Graham’s training took over; he tapped the brake, swerved to the shoulder. A blinding force whipped by within inches of hitting them and the rig behind them.

Graham glimpsed the white car, a missile in his rearview mirror. It launched cleanly off the highway, airborne for some thirty feet before smashing into the grassy plain, rolling end over end, swallowed by a dust cloud that spat fragmenting metal and glass before emitting a thud then a fireball, and a black column that billowed skyward.

The driver in the rig ahead grabbed his fire extin guisher and ran to the car, followed by Graham and the truck driver from the rig behind them. They got within twenty yards when the air split-thwack-boom thwackboom thwack-boom-as lightning explosions released concussion waves that forced the men to the ground.

The air reeked of gas and melting plastic. Flames and heat engulfed the overturned car, leaving the men helpless to get closer.

“Christ almighty, there are two people in there!” one of the truckers said. “No way they’ll survive!”

As the car burned, sirens sounded. Soon, Montana Highway Patrol cars, a deputy sheriff, two firetrucks and an ambulance had arrived.

Water hissed as firefighters doused the blaze.

Moe Holman shook his head at the carnage. “We’re going to need this stretch of road to investigate. People stuck way back there will not see the pope. I’m telling you, today just keeps getting better.”

His radio crackling, Holman looked at the traffic as his people tried controlling it.

“You really think he was coming at you?” Holman said to Graham and the truck drivers as he took notes. “Sounds crazy. Maybe he had a seizure?”

“Seizure, my ass.” One trucker spit and nodded to Graham. “Looked to me like he was gunning for you, like some dang fool kamikaze.”

Graham noticed Maggie off by herself, kneeling on the grass, and went to her. She was looking at a warped object.

“What is it?”

Without touching it, she pointed at a twisted piece of charred metal, the remains of a Montana license plate and a rental logo framed around it.

“It’s the guy we just saw in the truck stop parking lot.” She checked her notes. “Maybe the same guy on the plane. And I think I saw him watching us in the restaurant in Las Vegas.” She looked at Graham. “What’s happening?”

“Get in the car. Keep trying your calls.”

Graham got Moe Holman’s attention and the two men talked alone.

“Moe, it’s possible the fatalities in this car are linked to my case and maybe an unconfirmed, uncorrobo rated threat.”

Holman’s gum chewing ceased in mid-chew.

“Here? Against the pope?”

“Could be.”

“By who and what means?”

“I don’t know.”

“We never heard anything about this at the briefings this morning. No lookouts, or anything. Maybe you got it confused with the Seattle business yesterday.”

“What Seattle business?”

“All I’d heard is they detected some kind of security breach in Seattle. I heard they took care of it but are keeping a lid on the details. Don’t think it even got into the press yet. They don’t tell us, we’re just traffic control.”

Graham considered what Holman said.

“What’re you holding back from me on your case, Daniel?”

“My case may be related to some raw intelligence out of Africa.”

“Africa? What the hell else do you know?”

“A reporter from Washington, D.C., following the story was recently killed, along with his family, while camping near Banff. Looked accidental but we’re not certain.”

“What? Do you know these people in the car?”

“No. When you run the plate and get a name, alert the FBI and the people on the pope’s security detail. Ask for Secret Service Agent Blake Walker. Give him my cell number.”

“Count on it. But I’d bet my left one the feds will call me first for everything we’ve got on this crash. I’ll tell them what you said.” Holman nodded toward a military helicopter patrolling above the crash. “They’ve re stricted the airspace for the pope’s chopper from Great Falls to Cold Butte. The show’s going to start soon.”

“I need to go,” Graham said. “You have what you need from me.”

“Could you hold off so I can send someone with you. Make me feel better.”

“How long?”

“Until we get things under control here. We can’t spare anyone at the moment.”

“I want to go now, Moe.”

Holman’s radio crackled. A busload of pilgrims from South Dakota had hit an RV near Sand Springs. No serious injuries, just another traffic headache.

“This is what happens when the state’s population triples and everyone decides to visit your backyard for the day.”

Holman resumed chewing, waved Graham off, then spoke into his radio.

To make up for lost time, Graham drove as fast as the line of traffic would permit.

He used every gap to cut in, waving apologies to drivers he’d cut off. He tried calling Walker but his phone couldn’t get through. Maggie studied maps and tried calls in vain.

When Cold Butte lay ahead, Graham’s phone rang.

“Dan, it’s Stotter. Where are you?” Static filled the line. “Graham? Can you hear me?”

“Still in Montana. At Cold Butte. Before you tear into me-”

“Cold Butte? All right. Listen, something’s come up. Arnie Danton did a luminol test at the scene and found blood near the river. I know we should’ve scoped it before. Arnie said it would’ve got by us if not for your hunch.”

“Did he find a weapon?”

“Maybe a rock. Bang them on the head, put them in the canoe. Would’ve been consistent with the river. Damn near perfect.” Stotter’s other line rang. “We’ve still got some lab work to do, so stay put and stay tuned.”

“Wait! Mike, I need help. You’ve got to reach Special

Agent Blake Walker. He’s Secret Service with papal security down here. Advise him on Jake Conlin, aka, Burt Russell. Montana DMV has him. He could be with an unidentified female and a child, male. If Tarver was murdered, it gives credence to his conspiracy story.”

“We’re on it.”

As Graham and Maggie got nearer, the traffic flowing into the small town slowed to a near standstill. People had pulled their cars off the highway to park on the grass. They opened trunks and side doors, emptied rooftop racks, collected lawn chairs, coolers, blankets, banners, placards.

Welcome Holy Father, Montana Loves The Pope.

In some cases, groups of men and teenaged boys were carrying elderly people in wheelchairs.

Approximately every twenty or thirty yards there was a volunteer or a uniformed officer directing every one in steady, peaceful streams toward the school and Buffalo Breaks, site of the shrine where the pope would celebrate Mass for thousands.

“We’ve got to split up,” Graham said. “You get to the school, ask for Special Agent Blake Walker. I’ll find the house on Crystal Creek Road.”

Before Maggie got out, she took Graham’s hand, squeezed it hard and looked into his eyes. There was so much she wanted to tell him but there was no time.

“Go find your son,” he said.

Her chin crumpled. She nodded, then hurried into the crowd as helicopters thundered above them in the eternal prairie sky.

Time was ticking down.