Night Road

by Brendan DuBois

  But not enough to cause him to ignore the last of his three tasks.

  One more phone call. When it was answered on the second ring, he said, “Hi, my name is Zach Morrow. I’m calling from 10 Timberswamp Road. Holy Christ, my house is on fire.”

  Zach hung up, turned the key to the Ford, and after a few seconds of a horrible grinding noise, it started up. Zach turned the truck around and went down the gravel driveway, and about three miles down the road, a bright red American LaFrance fire truck belonging to the Purmort Volunteer Fire Department roared by him, heading up to his burning home.

  He didn’t look back.

  five

  Back in the comfortable interior of her government-issued Crown Victoria, Tanya Gibbs crossed her legs and let out a deep breath. A close run thing, but it had gone well. She had gone in and dangled the bait, and Chief Morrow had eventually snapped it up. Like most government workers who had spent decades in its employ, he was desperate to do something, anything, to get his precious bennies back.

  Not a fair fight, but she didn’t care. She thought about her best friend Emily for a moment and pushed the painful memories away, remembering that Tuesday morning more than a decade ago, those frantic, choking phone calls from Emily as she slowly smothered at her desk …

  Tanya looked out the rear window of the Crown Vic as Henry drove down the dirt driveway, seeing the disgraced Coast Guardsman staring at her. She felt a warm feeling start in her lower chest. Something about him was intriguing, attractive. He had carefully trimmed brown hair and his face was worn from spending a lot of time outdoors, and he had a strong, unyielding look about him. His steady gray eyes seemed to stare right through her. For years she had been around men of action, men who thought they were God’s gift to women, but Zach Morrow was different. He seemed to move slow and methodical, like he was carefully evaluating everything and everybody around him.

  Like her.

  She looked out the window at the passing trees. Another memory came to her, making her shiver again. Back in New Jersey, as a kid. Mom pushed her to join the Girl Scouts, though she really didn’t care to do it, and Tanya had asked Dad to intervene, but Dad being Dad, he had gone along with whatever her mother wanted, just so that screechy voice didn’t rise in anger. So into the Girl Scouts she had gone, and it had been dull and all right, save for the first time she had gone on an overnight camping trip, somewhere in the Pine Barrens. Bad enough that her troop leader had agreed to let the older girls tell ghost stories, it got worse later, when two older girls led her into the woods, promising to show her a magic cave that had rocks that glowed in the dark. Of course, the magic cave was a secret, so she was blindfolded. After what seemed to be a long time in the dark woods, they ran way, giggling, leaving her alone. Tearing off the blindfold in terror, she had wandered through the night, a nine-year-old girl, scratching her face and arms, bumping into tree trunks, until she finally saw the glow from the campsite’s stone fireplace.

  That night, she didn’t say a word to the two girls—who had smirked and giggled behind their hands all evening long—but a month later, when her troop went out on another overnight, she waited until everyone was at a neighboring campsite, making s’mores with another troop. She had sneaked away back to her own camp, went to the nearly-dead campfire, blew on it until it burst back into flames, and grabbed a burning pine branch. She had tossed the branch on the tent belonging to her tormenters and it burst into a blossom of fire. She then scrambled back to the s’more cookfest, and that had been that. Still, since then, she had never much liked the woods.

  To her driver, she said, “Henry, you’ve spent time in this part of the state, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Henry Wolfe said, driving in the right lane, keeping the speed at a constant fifty-five miles per hour. Another useless government program, all of the fleet vehicles now had little black boxes that spied on you and reported if you went over the speed limit. A cute little snoopy program put in by the current First Lady, who apparently assumed her mission in life was to make people lose weight and get stuck in traffic.

  “Then tell me,” she said. “Why do people stay in these poor little towns? What’s the point?”

  Henry said, “Truth is, ma’am, most of ’em don’t have a choice. They’re born poor, in a rural area, and the only way out is through a good job, the military, or a quality education. Most of the good jobs are gone, the schools are struggling to teach the basics, and the military is so choosy now, they only select the best.”

  Tanya looked out at what passed for scenery. They were on a two-lane highway heading south. To the left were trees, and to the right were trees. Up ahead were trees. Despite the importance of her unauthorized mission, boy, she hated being up here.

  “Then how did you make it out?” she asked.

  “Was born out,” he said. “Grew up in North Quincy, south shore of Massachusetts. Only reason I know anything up here is that my grandparents, they had a dairy farm near the Connecticut River. Spent a lot of summers there as a kid, before I joined the Army.”

  She looked at the back of Henry’s strong neck, thought about other administrators in her office, back in Boston. On road trips like this, most of them insisted on being up front with their driver and armed escort, thinking it was the just and democratic approach, showing their solidarity with someone with less education, fewer skills, and a hell of a lot lower salary. But she was different. She liked sitting in the back, talking to her driver without having to figure out his facial expressions, and also knowing she could shut her mouth without having to explain herself.

  Tanya said, “I see all these small towns, all these damn trees … still find it hard to believe anything criminal, anything evil goes on up here. Like this Duncan Crowley character.”

  Henry didn’t reply for about a mile and then carefully said, “For most of his neighbors, I bet they don’t think of him as being a criminal. From what I’ve learned from you, ma’am, in some way he’s providing a service to the residents up there. Cheap booze and cigarettes from Canada. Marijuana to whoever wants it. Loans to people would never make it through a background or credit check from a bank or a credit union.”

  Tanya laughed. “You defending that crook, are you?”

  “Not defending, ma’am. Just explaining. If most of his neighbors don’t think he’s a criminal, even fewer would think he’s evil. Oh, evil’s up here in these woods and small towns, but usually, it comes from some darkness, some outside influence.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Like a few years ago, these boys got together in a gang. They loved violent video games, ninja movies, that sort of thing. So they broke into a quiet rural house in Mount Vernon, not more than an hour from here, found a mom and her ten-year-old daughter sleeping, and took machetes to them both, just to see what it was like to kill. A few years before that, two teenage boys, all screwed up in the head, decided to steal money so they could start a new life in Australia.”

  Tanya said, “If I was a teenage boy, I’d think about starting a new life in Cancun, not Australia. What did these two punks do? Rob a bank or an armored car?”

  Henry said, “They went to a house up near Hanover, knocked on the door of two professors from Dartmouth. They claimed to be high school students doing research for a school project. Being the polite and liberal professors that they were, the boys were invited in. Can you imagine that? Two Dartmouth faculty members, cultured and privileged and living in one of the safest states in the nation, invite two teenage boys in without question. The husband answered their questions. The wife made them lunch. And later these two boys slit their throats.”

  The car stayed silent for another mile. Tanya said, “Outside influences, you said. So how do I fit into the equation?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean, ma’am.”

  Tanya said evenly, “You know exactly what I mean. You heard my discussion
with Zach Morrow back there, about his role in nailing Duncan Crowley and getting that shipping container. You saw the expression on his face, thinking I had the power and the authority to make it all right for him, get his dishonorable discharge reversed, get all of his benefits back. Simple soul bought the entire story. Didn’t even ask for a signed agreement.”

  Henry’s voice sounded just a tad reproachful. “Perhaps he was relying on your word being your bond. People in these parts, they take another person’s word very, very seriously.”

  “Having spent all these years in government service, the saltwater must’ve rotted out his brain. He should have known better.”

  “But you told him you had somebody backing you up who could make it right for him.”

  “I do.”

  “Your uncle, Warren Gibbs, am I right?”

  She sighed. “The senior senator from Ohio has more important things on his mind.”

  “Like running for president?”

  “Exactly. So if Morrow does succeed, maybe I will make that call. And maybe not.”

  Henry kept quiet for a bit and said, “A thousand dollars a day seems to be a lot.”

  She said, “Money deposited into a checking account from our side of the fence can just as easily be sucked out when the time comes.”

  “But the Regional Administrator … you’re going to have to brief him, won’t you?”

  Tanya said, “Don’t worry about that, Henry. Just keep on driving.”

  She touched the thick manila folder next to her, thinking about how those collection of papers and photographs were going to be the key for her doing her part to avenge Emily. That had been all she had craved during that warm September morning more than a decade ago when the towers fell and her best friend died. When she had changed her career from the New Jersey State Police to the new agency of Homeland Security. The FBI, CIA, the armed services … they all did good work, but she wanted to be here, in the good old homeland, ensuring that the people who had allowed 9/11 to happen wouldn’t have another chance to repeat their mistakes.

  As for the Regional Administrator … to hell with briefing him about anything. When the time came, she could claim the news about the missing shipping container and its magic cargo had come in via a tip line, and that would be that. In the excitement of the arrests, news coverage, and death and destruction for those smuggling the container, other questions could be overlooked. When this thing broke over the next several days, it’d be the biggest domestic deal since those four airliners went awry more than a decade ago.

  As for Zach Morrow, well, once before he had sacrificed himself for his nation. Perhaps he would have to do it again.

  Tanya didn’t feel guilty. She thought again of Emily, being in the second tower, fire and smoke behind her, leaning out of a shattered window on her office floor, looking down upon the streets of Manhattan below her, the back of her neck and hands getting scorched, smoke burning her lungs, people behind her shoving and screaming and trying desperately to get air to breathe, betrayed and abandoned by those who were elected and paid to protect her and the other thousands …

  There was a loud burst of noise as a logging truck roared by, also heading south. Long, shorn tree trunks bound by chains were secured on a trailer. The passing of the truck made the Crown Victoria quiver from the truck’s tailwind.

  “Damn,” she said, shaken out of her memories. “I sure don’t like trees.”

  partial summary transcript

  Daily Threat Assessment Task Force Teleconference Call

  April 14th

  Homeland Security representative: “… and I think we’ve reached the end of our call today. Anybody else?”

  CIA representative: “Sounds fine by me.”

  State Department representative: “Ditto here.”

  FBI representative: “Hold on, I want to go back to the matter of the Mextel shipping container. It seems like—”

  Homeland Security: “I don’t think we really have time to get into that again. Let’s just consider that matter closed.”

  FBI: “Closed?”

  Homeland Security: “Closed. Let’s just say the system worked.”

  [[[Cross talk]]]

  FBI: “… last time somebody made an idiotic comment like that was when that Al-Qaeda moron tried to take down an airliner over Christmas with an underwear bomb. It’s a miracle we didn’t have an airliner break up and have bodies scattered around downtown Detroit. Despite being that close to disaster, your idiot boss said the system worked. That was bullshit then and remains bullshit now.”

  [[[Cross talk]]]

  Homeland Security: “Tom, you know what the lesson of that day was?”

  FBI: “I can hardly wait. Go ahead.”

  Homeland Security: “My so-called idiot boss still has her job. Thus endeth the lesson. Meeting adjourned.”

  six

  In Laval, Quebec, about thirty minutes northwest of Montreal, Francois Ouellette, president of the Iron Steeds Motorcycle Club, sat behind his desk at the club headquarters and twirled a pencil in his fingers. Across from him was Michael Grondin, his deputy and second-in-command, and Michael’s face looked pale. Francois knew why. Spinning a pencil in his fingers was never a good sign for whoever was sitting across from him.

  “Before I go on, Michael, I want to make sure I have all the facts straight, before I make a decision, okay?”

  Michael nodded. He was nearing fifty, was heavy around the waist, and had a thick thatch of black beard that started at his cheekbones and went down to mid-chest. He was balding up front and on top, and wore the rest of his hair in a long ponytail. Francois thought he looked like an idiot with the front of his head shiny bald like that, but kept his mouth shut and let others make the point. One of those others was a new kid that had been accepted into the club last month. During one rowdy drunken night at a campground deep in the Laurentian Mountains, he had playfully tugged at Michael’s ponytail and said it looked like a horse’s tail, attached to a horse’s ass.

  Michael went at the kid for a couple of hours with his bare fists, tire iron, and a propane torch, until the kid was crying for his mamma and begging for a quick end, which Michael eventually provided with an ice pick through his right eardrum.

  So Michael was tough, but he was scared of Francois, which was pleasing indeed. Francois hadn’t become president of the Iron Steeds because of his cooking skills. Pencil still twirling about, he said, “Andre and Pierre, we haven’t heard from them since last night. Calls to their cellphones go unanswered. A call to that roadhouse … the Flight Deck. Whoever answers the phone there denies Andre and Pierre ever showed up. The guy they were to meet, that Duncan Crowley. Finally got a hold of that prick, and he’s so smooth and apologetic, said he was still waiting for them to show up.”

  Michael nodded. “You got it right so far, boss.”

  The floor beneath his feet vibrated from heavy bass. The club’s headquarters was here, on the second floor of the Slinky Pussy Gentlemen’s Club, which had the advantage of screwing up nearly every surveillance system known to man due to the constant heavy music and loud conversation. His office was heavily insulated, with nice wood paneling, the motto of the club done in stitch work—“A La Vie A La Mort”—and framed prints of Winslow Homer. Francois didn’t know why he liked the nineteenth-century American painter who did ocean landscapes. He just did, and he proved that point a few years back, at the tail end of the Biker Wars, when a rep from the L.A. branch of the Hells Angels came by to make the peace and made the mistake of laughing at the old prints.

  Francois had tossed the guy through the nearest window, where he ended up in the club’s rear parking lot with a broken arm and leg, and from there, negotiations for the peace came to a quick and productive end.

  He said, “You’ve made the necessary calls. Provincial police, RCMP, Border Patrol, Vermont State Police, and
New Hampshire State Police. About all we know for certain is that they went through the border crossing in Derby Line, Vermont, yesterday. Right?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Francois let the pencil drop to the top of his clean desk. “Hospitals, ambulance services, medical centers?”

  “All blank, boss.”

  Francois took a big sigh. Damn, he’d have to tell Andre’s mother what had happened, and he could just imagine the screaming and wailing he’d have to put up with. Andre wasn’t too bright but he was his nephew, and his sister did love the poor bugger.

  “All right,” he said. “Andre’s a little hotheaded but he’d never fly out on his own. Pierre would take a bullet to his balls before leaving Andre behind. So I think we both know what the hell happened.”

  Michael’s face, if possible, grew more pale. Francois said, “That shipping container must be worth an awful fucking lot for this guy in New Hampshire to not let us in on the action. I mean, a real fucking lot, especially with him taking out two of our boys.”

  Michael said, “Manny, the provincial police guy who tipped us off on the container, he said the place was a fucking circus when it arrived. Snoopers around and surveillance teams, and when the container disappeared, everyone involved went ape shit. Word on the streets, there’s an in-house reward to law enforcement, a million bucks to whoever finds it.”

  “A million dollars,” Francois said dreamily. “For a reward. That tells you how valuable the damn thing is. Your Manny fellow, he still can’t tell you what’s inside of it?”

  Michael shook his head. “No. Just that it’s valuable, somehow it’s attached to that Crowley character in New Hampshire, and that’s it.”

  Francois picked up the pencil, twirled it one more time. “Okay. This is how it’s gonna be. I want a zap squad sent down there. All right? Guys who know how to take orders. I want this Crowley and his family greased, but before they wrap it up, they’re gonna have this Crowley guy tell ’em where and how that shipping container’s arriving. Got it? Then before they whack him, I want his balls cut off, dangling in his face, and the guys to tell ’em that this was a cheery fuck you from Francois Ouellette and the Iron Steeds.”