The Lightning Stones

by Jack Du Brul

  Mercer lay in the wet grass while the loader crabbed across the road and fell down into the final ditch at the bottom of the access route. The engine kept power going to all four tires, but the bucket had buried itself into the swampy ground. The wheel spin managed to kick up an impressive amount of semifrozen mud, but the loader wasn’t going anywhere.

  He heard the Ford hit the public road and begin a long, smooth acceleration away from the mine. They had gotten away with murdering seven people. Mercer had no idea what they’d stolen in the backpack—some part of the experiment, no doubt. He couldn’t begin to speculate what would be worth the cold-blooded murder of so many innocents.

  All Mercer could do was lie on his back in the rain, knowing he’d failed to bring justice for his mentor. He ached everywhere.

  Mercer was still there, six minutes later, when he finally heard sirens approaching the mine. By then, he had already decided what he had to do. It would have nothing to do with justice. It was too personal now. What came next was revenge.

  3

  A state cop took Mercer’s statement while a female paramedic patched up some abrasions on his left shoulder and right knee. He’d hit the muddy ground hard enough to tear the thick fabric of his coveralls and flay open good-size patches of skin. An ankle was also sore, but it was something a few ibuprofen and a couple of vodka gimlets could handle. A dozen more cops had descended on the mine while a team from the ME’s office had removed the body of the hoist operator from his cab. Forensic people photographed the blood spatter and the arc of shiny brass shell casings that had spewed from the machine pistol that had killed him.

  “Come on,” the state detective said incredulously. “You expect me to believe that you hung on to the bottom of the elevator cage as it rose fifteen hundred feet?”

  He spoke with a midwestern flatness, and his suit had come from a discount chain store. His name was Paul Gerard and he was about fifty, with a silvery crew cut and a drinker’s florid nose. The skin around where he’d once worn a wedding ring was still slightly puckered. Divorced less than a year. Self-made cliché was Mercer’s estimation.

  They were sitting in a glassed-in cubicle near the main lift hoist that had once been offices when the mine was open.

  Mercer winced when some spray was shot into his shoulder wound. “We’ve gone over this. I discovered the bodies, and the driver confirmed I borrowed his bucket loader. Bill—”

  “Gundersson.”

  “Right. Gundersson. You’ve seen the bullet holes on that thing for yourself. That alone proves the gunmen wanted to stop me, right?”

  Gerard refused to respond. Mercer plowed on anyway. “I followed them from the experiment chamber, and the only way I could have reached the surface in time to keep after them was to hold on to the underside of the elevator cage.”

  The detective looked down at his little notepad and changed subjects.

  “How was it you happened to be there at the right time?”

  “Right time?” Mercer couldn’t believe the cop would use such an idiotic phrase.

  “You know, right after these shooters show up and kill six people down there.”

  “Abraham Jacobs just arrived here today. I assume he was the primary target.” Mercer paused. “Correction. He and the others were collateral damage. Whatever they took away in the backpack was the primary target.”

  “Any ideas what was in it?”

  “None whatsoever,” Mercer replied. He gave a grateful nod to the paramedic after she’d applied a wide adhesive bandage to his shoulder.

  “How are you on your tetanus shot?” she asked, closing up her large orange medical case.

  “Two years out, so I’m good.”

  “All right, I cleaned out the wounds and gave you some topical antibiotics. If you start showing signs of infection like redness or purulence, or if you suffer fever or chills, please consult a physician.”

  “I will. Thank you.” Mercer turned his attention back to Detective Gerard. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out what was stolen if you go through the computer down there. It’ll have detailed descriptions of what they were up to.”

  “And it was this Abraham Jacobs running the show?”

  “No. He was lending a hand. The lead researcher was Susan Tunis. I think she’s a PhD in chemistry or atmospherics or something. As I understand it, Abe was just an adviser.”

  “So why did you chase the gunmen?”

  It was a reasonable question and one that Mercer had been asking himself for years because this wasn’t the first time he’d encountered armed men. Far from it. “Why did I go after them?” he repeated Gerard’s question. “I did it because if I hadn’t, no one else would have.”

  “You some kinda hero?” the detective sneered with a cop’s offense at civilians taking the law into their own hands.

  Mercer didn’t want to antagonize the police, so he bit back an angry retort and lied to the man instead. “No, Detective, I just saw the murdered corpse of an old friend and lost my judgment for a few minutes.”

  Gerard, given the answer he wanted to hear, nodded. “Let me ask you something else. Do you think this was terrorism?”

  “Does my opinion really matter? With seven people gunned down by men toting automatic weapons, the FBI will be calling this terrorism just so they can go after the shooters. ATF will get involved, as will every other acronym-happy division of Homeland Security. You’re only asking me questions now because the feds haven’t rolled in from the Twin Cities, and those agents, in turn, will be supplanted by the big boys flying here from D.C. But I’ll tell you the truth, Detective Gerard. This was a robbery, pure and simple. They were after whatever Abe Jacobs had brought with him this morning, and they killed all the witnesses. As to your inevitable follow-up, again I have no idea what it was or why they attacked here and not at Abe’s lab back at his school.” Mercer paused. “Are we done?”

  Gerard closed his notebook and slipped it inside a jacket pocket. The pen he kept fiddling with. “You were right about the feds. I’m just babysitting the scene until they show. The guys that went down into the mine are there to secure the scene. They can’t touch dick.”

  “Piss you off?” Mercer asked.

  “Soon as I got the call and heard automatic weapons were used, I knew I was gonna be low man on the totem pole.”

  Mercer wasn’t unsympathetic. “I’ve worked with a lot of feds over the years. One-on-one they’re okay. It’s when you face them as a bureaucracy that they all begin to suck.”

  Gerard snorted. “That’s it exactly. I thought you said you’re a mining engineer. How’d you ever tangle with the FBI?”

  “I’m a favorite target of some pretty extreme environmental groups.” Which was true, but not the real reason Mercer had so much experience with terrorism and counterterrorism techniques. That mostly came, like today, from being in the wrong place at the wrong time but still willing to do something about it. He asked the state detective, “How’d you like to do me and this investigation a huge favor?”

  Gerard looked guarded once again. He cocked an eyebrow.

  “The feds are going to need twelve to eighteen hours just to get the ball rolling, time that this investigation can’t afford. You and I both know the gunmen’s pickup has already been dumped and the shooters have scattered. There won’t be any fingerprints or DNA, so that’ll be a dead end. The only real clues are going to be in Abraham Jacobs’s lab.”

  “And you don’t think the feds know this?”

  “They might, but since Abe was second banana here they’re going to tear apart Susan Tunis’s life first.”

  “I could tell ’em what you told me. About how you believe the attack was timed to coincide with when your friend got here.”

  Mercer shook his head. “That won’t make a bit of difference. They have procedures, and once they figure out the ghost of Osama bin Laden didn’t murder those people, and that this is a robbery and not terror related, they’re going to lose interest and p
ull resources. They might not get around to Abe’s place for two, maybe three, days.”

  “So what’s your favor?” Gerard asked as if he didn’t know.

  “Let me go,” Mercer said. “Keep me out of this. Make Bill Gundersson a hero by telling the FBI that he tried to ram the pickup when he saw all the guns.”

  “You know that’s not going to happen.”

  Mercer sagged a little in his seat, deflating.

  “On the other hand,” Gerard said. “Suppose I went outside to have a smoke and you happened to sneak on outta here?”

  “You’d do that for me?” Mercer asked, hoping against hope.

  “Nope,” Gerard said, putting on a ridiculously large cowboy hat and getting to his feet. “But I would do it for a state cop killed about twelve years ago who approached a disabled vehicle not knowing the driver was wanted by the FBI. Seems it wasn’t information they were willing to share. Our guy took three to the chest. His vest stopped two of the slugs, but the third tore into his heart. The perp stole his cruiser and kept going for another three hours before he was taken down at a roadblock.”

  Gerard straightened his jacket. “The feds are going to think I’m a rube no matter what. You’re just another witness as far as my notes will show.” He had spoken seriously all through their conversation, but now his voice took on a flinty edge. It would have been clichéd had the state detective not been so earnest. “You’re going to see this thing through, right?”

  Mercer answered as simply as he could. “To the bitter fucking end, Detective.”

  “I’ll be back in ten.”

  Paul Gerard stepped out of the office and ducked through the towering sliding doors and into the rain, a cigarette pursed between his lips and the brim of his hat ready to shield his smoke from the drizzle. Mercer waited a beat and followed the state cop. Gerard was at the far corner of the warehouse, chatting with the guy they were using to replace the dead hoist operator. Judging by the cloud of smoke wreathed around their heads, Gerard had shared from his soft pack of Marlboros.

  Mercer would have loved to take the opportunity to clean up. He still wore his filthy and torn coveralls and steel-toed boots, but there wasn’t the time. Gerard had given him a limited window. He left the building and made his way to a nearby single-wide trailer painted white with a faded blue stripe. The trailer had first been towed off the dealer’s lot sometime in the late sixties, and the old mine represented the last in a long string of incrementally more dismal homesteads. Inside the reconfigured structure were shower stalls, lockers, and a kitchen with seating for eight. Mercer and his students used the mobile home to change after each day’s lesson before they drove down to the motor inn where they were all staying.

  Three of them were at the table with a state trooper, held over because they had seen the gunmen’s pickup. All four men had the glazed eyes of extreme boredom.

  “Hey, Mercer, what’s going on?” Hans asked.

  “No talking,” the cop said automatically.

  Mercer addressed the crew-cut patrolman with the Smokey Bear hat and Sam Browne belt. “Detective Gerard said he’s done with me and I can take off. He also said to give him a few minutes before sending over the next witness.”

  “Did he say who he wanted?” the young officer asked. He’d been trained to be in control of any situation, and yet he felt himself automatically deferring to Mercer.

  “He said to leave it up to you,” Mercer replied. He recognized the kid’s inexperience and gave him an outlet to show he still had some authority.

  The young trooper had no idea how easily he’d been manipulated. “Okay. If Detective Gerard has your contact information, I guess it’s all right.”

  “Thanks.” Mercer addressed his students, “Sorry about all this, guys. We’ll finish up our last lesson tomorrow and have our party afterward.”

  One of the men was about to correct Mercer but then caught what their teacher was doing. He wanted to buy some time, and they would be more than happy to give it to him.

  “Ist nicht kein Problem,” Hans said, stressing his accent to the point of parody. He’d keep Gerard busy for hours playing up the language barrier in case the state cop changed his mind about letting his star witness go.

  Mercer grabbed his civilian clothes from a locker, fished the keys to his rental from the front of his jeans pocket, and strode out of the trailer without a backward glance.

  Hertz had given him a GMC Yukon, an SUV only slightly smaller than the steam dredges that once plied its namesake river in search of placer gold. Mercer slid into the driver’s seat, grateful that he’d gotten insurance because the stains he’d just transferred from his coveralls to the fabric seat looked permanent. The big V8 rumbled to life, and he pulled out of the parking lot, carefully threading his way around the haphazardly parked state and local cop cars. The low clouds reflected the hypnotic blue and red flashes of all the rooftop lights.

  One cop detained him for only a moment at the gate and waved him through when Mercer explained that Gerard had said he could leave. Driving down the access road he could see the wanton path of destruction he’d carved with the big Caterpillar front-end loader. It really did look like some mechanical animal had gone on a rampage.

  At the base of the haul road, a group of cops had cordoned off the bright yellow earthmover while a couple of guys in wet Tyvec suits were examining the bullet-riddled machine. No doubt they would be admonished by the federal forensic teams for not waiting.

  Mercer was waved through by another miserable-looking state patrolman in a rain-slicked poncho who’d likely been radioed from above. Mercer turned in the opposite direction from the shooters, knowing no answers would be found in that direction. He wasn’t even sure what questions he needed answered at this point. All Mercer knew for certain was that he had not lied to Gerard. He was going to see this through, all the way to the end.

  —

  The distances in the American heartland were vast, something he’d forgotten from his occasional cross-country trips when he was in Boulder at the Colorado School of Mines and drove back to visit his grandparents in Vermont. He had left the Leister Deep at nearly six at night. The sun was well down and the miles were mesmerizing. By midnight he felt like he’d covered most of the Midwest but realized he was less than halfway to his destination. He saw why the snobs in New York and D.C. called this flyover country. You sure as hell didn’t want to drive it.

  He knew he should pull over into one of the brightly lit oases of civilization that flanked both sides of the four-lane interstate, each promising several multistory hotels with recognizable names, chain restaurants not unlike the ones he’d left back in Minnesota, and twenty-four-hour gas stations abuzz with truckers hauling hard for the coasts. He passed several such sanctuaries, all nearly identical, but when he finally realized he was becoming a danger to himself and others if he remained behind the wheel, the next exit was as dark and deserted as an abandoned logging road, forcing him down several miles of twisty macadam until he came across a town that was nothing more than a crossroads with a building at each corner. One was a two-story storefront that housed a closed diner, a lawyer’s office, and a barbershop below, while above was a sign for Sukie’s Dance Studio in a large window so caked with dust that even in the darkness it looked like it hadn’t seen a student since the Lindy was the rage, or at least the Hustle. Opposite that was another, larger commercial building set back from the road and surrounded by small farm machinery for sale: skid-steers, tines to convert front-end loaders into forklifts, mechanical splitters, hoers, reapers, and tractor attachments whose purpose Mercer could merely guess. The words Feed Lot were written over the large windows, and the gravel parking area was crisscrossed with spilled winter wheat seed. Another corner of the town was a low ambling building with two identical wings of darkly painted doors off a central office/reception area that had been made to look like a bell tower, though the belfry was faded paint and the bell was just a plywood outline. Across the street, a gas
station’s spiderlike canopy hovered in the sodium-vapor glow of its own lights, like one of the alien space ships in Close Encounters. That’s how Mercer described it to himself, and he recognized the depth of his exhaustion by the way he was torturing metaphors in his head. Another sign of fatigue was how the dingy roadside motor court, with its cheesy bell-tower motif, looked to him as inviting as the Ritz Paris or New York’s Mandarin Oriental.

  He pulled in, the four-by-four’s tires crunching over broken glass and the grit laid down atop the previous winter’s snow and ice. Light from the office spilled out just enough for him to see a woman emerge from a back room, her hands to her face as she knuckled sleep from her eyes. Mercer thought she must have been the employee of the year to hear him pull up and be ready before he stepped into the lobby, but then he saw her pick up a blanket-wrapped bundle from behind the counter and gently place it against her shoulder above her heavy breasts. He could now hear the faint bleats of a crying infant.

  Mercer killed the engine and grabbed the bundle of clothes he’d taken from the trailer back at the mine. His eyes felt as gritty as his skin, and he hoped this place had enough hot water for its—he counted: ten, eleven, twelve—twelve rooms, because he planned on using it all.

  He opened the glass door softly so the bell attached near its upper hinge didn’t disturb the child, who’d quieted during his approach. The girl, no more than nineteen, had bad skin and a rather bovine expression. She said nothing by way of greeting.

  “I’d like a room,” Mercer finally said in a quiet whisper.

  “Sixty bucks,” she replied, “but you’re like filthy. I can’t let you stay here.”

  Mercer looked down at his coveralls. They were a mess, but then he doubted she would have cared much if it wasn’t her responsibility to clean the room in the morning after he’d gone.