Storm Front

Chapter 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 follow 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.

Virgil, she thought.

Bauer saw the car coming, and Ma’s truck now parked behind him, Zahavi shouting, “Go! Go!” and Bauer said, “That fuckin’ Flowers.”

His Range Rover was facing a highway ditch just past a flagpole, and with Ma where she was, he couldn’t go anywhere but forward. He did that, flooring it, and the truck lurched forward, plowed across the ditch, and swerved onto the highway. Six seconds later he was accelerating through sixty miles an hour. In his rearview mirror, he saw Ma buck onto the highway — she’d taken the same shortcut as he had — and then a car swerve out after them. They were a quarter mile behind, though, and he was still gaining.

“Get out in the country and I’ll find a road that’ll trash them,” he said to Zahavi. “Look for a turnoff.”

She said, “Police.”

The rain was coming hard now, in sheets, the lightning almost constant, thunder banging on the roof of the car like a bass drum. Bauer saw emergency flashers, closing fast. Much closer, a road cut off to the right. “Hang on,” he said. They took the turn, accelerated again, down a street with houses on one side, commercial buildings on the other. Bauer checked the nav system and could see that he was coming to a T intersection.

“Gotta make a decision here,” he said, and at the T, he turned right, toward what the navigation map showed as a dead end. He saw headlights behind him, one set, then another set with flashers, then a third set, and then he was at the end of the street. He continued straight ahead, through some small trees and brush, over a few bumps, through a barbwire fence, which was flicked aside by the bull bars, and then they were on a highway exit ramp, or maybe a frontage road, and he accelerated again and said, “Let them suck on that.”

A minute later, one set of headlights burst onto the frontage road, then the flashers. “Well, goddamnit,” he said. A bigger highway was coming up, and he recognized it as the one he’d just left, 169. They’d come in a circle.

Zahavi said, “Left — right is toward the town.”

There was some traffic, but he timed it right and sailed through the intersection, and turned north, heading out of town, throwing up a rooster tail of water from the wide tires. “Watch the nav system, watch the nav.”

When Bauer took off, Ma was right behind him. She tracked him around the first curve, saw the flashers coming up from the south, got her cell phone out, and called Virgil. “That you with the flashers?”

“Pull off, Ma, pull off.”

“Screw that,” she said. “They pointed a gun at me. I’m gonna put them in a ditch.”

Virgil saw the T intersection coming up on his nav, and then Bauer turned right. “He’s headed for a dead end. He’s gotta have nav, I think he’s going through.”

Jenkins: “I can’t take that.”

“Turn around, go back. He’s headed out to 169.”

“I’m out there now,” Shrake said.

“Wait until we call you.”

Virgil saw Bauer go right through the end of the street, followed by Ma in her pickup, and then he was there, banging through the ditch and onto the road.

Virgil shouted, “We’re coming out,” and Shrake called back, “I’m coming up, I’m right there,” and then, “He’s out heading north, I’m right on his ass — he’s pulled away, though.”

Zahavi was turned on her seat, looking out the back, saw the flashers turn onto the highway, but well back, behind another truck; but the other truck was matching their speed. She said, “We have another follower.”

Bauer let the Range Rover out, and the pursuing lights fell behind. Two minutes, three, four, and then Bauer said, ““Here’s what we want. Hang on.”

A minute later, he took a left turn, and they were on gravel.

Shrake said into his radio, “He’s got a lot more speed than we have. I’m going with the light show.”

“Be careful, for Christ’s sakes,” Virgil said. “There are houses out here.”

In his truck, Shrake dropped the window, took a blast of rain, got the M16 off the floor, stuck it one-handed out the window, propped the forestock on the wing mirror support, aimed low, and pulled the trigger. A dozen rounds went out, the tracers streaking downrange like supersonic fireflies, into the roadside ditch ahead of the fleeing Range Rover.

Bauer saw the tracers flash by and shouted, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and yanked the truck to the side of the road.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Zahavi screamed.

“That was a machine gun,” Bauer shouted back. “Fuck this,” and he popped the door and was out with his hands over his head, the rain pounding down on his head.

Two seconds later, the pursuing truck stopped down the road, and a man jumped out and in the oncoming lights of the truck with the flashers, Bauer could see the man’s silhouette with the long gun. He shouted, “We give up.”

Virgil stopped beside Shrake’s truck, and then Ma pulled up, and then Jenkins. Virgil and Jenkins pulled on rain jackets, and Ma pulled a plastic garbage bag over her head. Jenkins took the rifle from Shrake, and the three of them walked up to Bauer and Zahavi, who both had their hands over their heads. Shrake was a few steps behind, pulling on a jacket. Bauer and Zahavi looked like drowned rats.

“Crazy motherfuckers,” Virgil said. “You’re both under arrest for everything. Shrake, read them their rights.”

“I am a diplomat and I invoke immunity,” Zahavi said.

“Immune this,” Ma, said, and she hit Zahavi in the eye with a balled fist, and the Israeli went down. One second later she was back up, ready to go, but Jenkins got her around the waist and said, “Let’s not.”

Virgil had hold of Ma, who twisted around and said, “She put a gun in my face.”

Bauer said, “Yeah, she had a gun. She made me do it.”

“I am a diplomat—”

Virgil: “Fuck a bunch of immunity.” To Jenkins and Shrake: “Cuff them and transport them up to Ramsey. Aggravated assault, et cetera. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Where are you going?”

Virgil looked at his watch. Five minutes to nine. “I oughta know in the next couple of minutes.” Then he remembered, looked at Bauer, and asked, “Where’s the stone?”

“Floor of the truck.”

Virgil and Ma walked up to the truck, and Virgil saw the bowling bag. He picked it up, and turned to Ma.

“So there’s no auction?”

She took the bag from him, unzipped it, walked to the front of Bauer’s truck, and smashed the stone against the bull bars on the front. The stone cracked in half, showing a white interior.

“It’s an imitation, made out of plaster of paris,” she said. “I told you Reverend Jones would do something tricky. The auction is over. The money and the stone are gone.”

They all looked at the shattered fake, and then Bauer said, “Aw, shit.”

Virgil asked Ma, “Where’s Jones?”

“He’s turning himself in — to you. He should be down at the Perkins at any minute. He’ll need to go to a hospital, not to a jail. He’s in terrible shape. I don’t know how he holds together. Only willpower now, the medicine doesn’t work anymore.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. To Jenkins and Shrake: “Change in plan. Jenkins takes these two up to Ramsey. Shrake comes with me and we’ll bust Jones, and Shrake will transport him to Regions. He walked out of Mankato once, I’m not going to give him another chance.”

Ma asked, “What about me?”

Virgil shrugged: “The way I see it, you just carried out the plan we talked about last night. As long as we get lots and lots of cooperation.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Let’s do this,” Virgil said. “We’ll lock the Range Rover and leave it. I’ll get it towed tonight. Ma, you can follow us down to the Perkins. Let’s get out of the rain.”

So Bauer and Zahavi were cuffed, Zahavi silent for once, and they all walked to whatever vehicles they were going to, and Ma said to Virgil, “You are strangely cheerful, and that worries me.”

“Yeah, well, you know,” Virgil said, but he couldn’t help grinning at her. “You win some, and you lose some.” He looked up at the dark sky, the leading edge of the storm now well to the east, took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of the rain on the gravel and the corn, and said, “What a great night, huh?”

On the way back to town, Virgil got on the secret phone. When Lincoln answered, he said, “I’ve busted Bauer and Zahavi, the Israeli Mossad agent. She’s claiming diplomatic immunity, but you might be able to trade something for her… reasonable treatment.”

“Somebody will think about that.”

“You got your guy?”

“That’s classified,” she said, and hung up.

In other words, Virgil thought, Yes.

Virgil and Shrake pulled into the Perkins, but Ma did not. Virgil saw her taillights disappearing down the highway and called to Shrake, “Where the hell is she going?”

“Probably gonna pull some more bullshit,” Shrake said.

“Jones better be here, or I’ll bust her ass, too,” Virgil said.

There was a lot of water in the restaurant parking lot, but the rain had slowed. They went inside. No Jones. “Sonofabitch,” Virgil said.

Then a moonfaced man with a buzz cut waved a hand at them and called, “Virgil?”

Virgil recognized the voice, walked over and said, “You’ve changed.”

Jones was sitting in front of a half-full cup of coffee and an empty pie plate, looking up at Virgil. He said, “I wanted to say good-bye to my wife. I couldn’t go as usual — this is my disguise.”

Virgil said, “Well, sir, you’re under arrest. We’re going to take you up to Regions Hospital in St. Paul. You’ll be held in a security ward.”

“I think you’re too late,” Jones said.

“Never too late to go to jail,” said Shrake.

“Well, big man, I have to tell you. I think you’re wrong about that.” Jones sighed, his eyes turned up, and he slipped out of the booth. Shrake tried to catch him, but he landed squarely on his moon face.

Virgil tried to pick him up, but it was like trying to get hold of a two-hundred-pound lump of Jell-O. Virgil called 911, identified himself, and asked for an ambulance: “You better hurry.”

When Jones was on his way to the hospital, with Shrake following behind the ambulance, Virgil called Ma, but got no answer, so he headed over to Awad’s apartment.

Awad came to the door, and was effusive: “This was wonderful. Wonderful.” He embraced Virgil, who pulled his head back, afraid he was about to be kissed on both cheeks. “What can I tell you, as Americans say? I have already chosen the airplane. This is a 1999 Cessna 206H, slightly used, I am offered a deal of the lifetime.”

“Better not tell me about it,” Virgil said. “I’m a cop.”

“Ah, of course,” Awad said. “But…”

Al-Lubnani was packing clothes into a suitcase.

“You’re out of here?” Virgil asked.

“Indeed. Tonight. I will drive the Kia to Chicago. I hope the Hatchet will not interfere?”

“I have good reason to believe that he will not,” Virgil said.

“Good,” al-Lubnani said. “I need two days of freedom in France. After that, they will not find me.”

“I don’t suppose you kept the money here,” Virgil said.

“With the possibility that you would come? Of course not,” al-Lubnani said. “I trust you like my brother… but I’m afraid my brother is a rascal.”

“Well, like I said, I don’t really care. Where’s the stone?”

Al-Lubnani and Awad exchanged glances, and Virgil thought al-Lubnani might have gone a shade paler. “You don’t have it? Your assistant was here—”

“I don’t have an assistant,” Virgil snapped. “What the hell is going on? We had a deal.”

“But she said it was over — that you arrested the Mossad agent and this Bauer, that you were arresting Jones. That you sent her to get the stone.”

“Aw, for Christ sakes,” Virgil said. He cupped his hands. “Was she…?”

They both nodded.

One last trip that night, out to Ma’s place. The truck was parked in the yard, and there were lights on all over the house. It was still raining, but now, more of a drip than a drumbeat. Ma met him at the door: “My goodness, look what the cat dragged in. Come on inside, we just finished making caramel corn.”

Inside, Virgil found her three youngest, eating caramel corn out of plastic bowls and watching Iron Man 2. Sam said, “We’re coming to a good part. You wanna watch?”

Virgil said, “I’ve got to talk to your mom.”

“We better go outside,” Ma said.

Virgil followed her out. She was moving right along, out across the yard to the barn. Virgil trotted to catch up, and inside the barn, she flicked on a light, a single bulb that showed up a tractor, a Bobcat, and a bunch of related machinery. She said, “Back here,” and threaded past the machinery to a ladder that went up into the loft.

Virgil said, “Ma, we gotta—”

“Up here,” she said. Virgil climbed up into the loft, into the slightly acid smell of the hay that was stored there. There was no light in the loft, except what came through the loft door from a pole light out by the driveway; the rain made a pleasant tickling sound on the roof.

Ma was sitting on what appeared to be a mattress. She said, “Rolf and Tall Bear sometimes bring their girlfriends up here.”

Virgil said, “Ma…”

Ma patted the mattress and said, “Virgie, there’s only one way you’re gonna get that stone.”