Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  And the more he thought about it, the more pissed he got.

  WEATHER CAME DOWN the stairs, wearing a frilly black cocktail dress that skillfully showed off her ass. She said, “Hi, Virgil. . . . Say, you smell like a fish.”

  “Ah, for Christ’s sakes.” To Davenport: “What do I do?”

  “What do you want to do?” Davenport asked.

  “Go beat the shit out of Sinclair,” Virgil said. “Find out what’s going on.”

  “Well, God bless you, Virgil.”

  “You think I should?” Virgil asked.

  “Yup. That’s what I would do,” Davenport said. “I’ll have my cell phone with me—let me know what you find out.”

  Weather had taken Davenport’s tie from around his neck, fit it around his collar, and began tying it. She said, “Give us a little time to party, though.”

  Virgil said, “Even though you insulted me about my fish smell, I gotta say, that dress does good things for you.”

  “I was afraid it made my ass look big,” she said.

  “Ah, no, no,” Virgil said. Her ass was right at his eye level. “Not at all.”

  Davenport nodded. “Virgil is correct. And observant.”

  VIRGIL SLAPPED his thighs, stood up, and said, “Well, I’m gonna go chain-whip Sinclair. I’ll probably drag his ass down to the lockup. Mai, too. I gotta believe that Mai isn’t American, or even Canadian. She’s some kind of spy, and that means they gotta know something about these killings. We can hold them for a couple of days until we get something back from the State Department. Man, this is gonna hurt, picking her up.”

  Weather finished with Davenport’s tie, patted him on the chest, and Davenport said, “Find Shrake and Jenkins—or see if Del’s around. Take some backup. Then go get these Vietnamese guys, too. Put them all inside until their status is figured out. They must be traveling on bad documents. We’ll get DNA from all of them. They’ll be a risk to run, so there won’t be any bail.”

  “You think we need a warrant?”

  “No. We’ve got probable cause,” Davenport said. “If they invite you in, you see anything lying around . . .”

  “All right. Goddamnit. This—”

  “Hey,” Davenport said. “You cracked it, man. Not even a week. What the fuck do you want?”

  “Wash your hands before you go,” Weather said. “You don’t want to arrest somebody when you smell like a fish. There’s some Dove on the kitchen sink.”

  “All right.” He moped off toward the kitchen.

  Weather called after him, “Say, Lucas said you were taking a friend fishing up at the cabin. It wasn’t this Mai person, was it?”

  “Ah, jeez . . .”

  He started back toward the kitchen, heard Davenport mutter something to his wife, and he turned back and caught them suppressing smiles, and he asked, “What?”

  “Nothing,” Davenport said.

  “He said, ‘At least Virgil wasn’t the only one who got screwed,’” Weather said.

  22

  MAI AND PHEM sat in the back of Tai’s rented Toyota Sequoia, a huge tank of an SUV, and Phem unwrapped the rifle, pulling gently at the soft gray foam that had cushioned the weapon from road bumps and motor vibration.

  Mai was looking at the target with a pair of night-vision glasses: there was enough ambient light to clearly illuminate the entire target area, and she could see the security men orbiting through the kill zone every few minutes.

  “Lot of guns,” she said in Vietnamese.

  “Of course,” Phem said. “But they won’t expect our reach.”

  Phem had the rifle free of its wraps: an accurized Ruger .338 bolt-action rifle in a black synthetic stock, with a twenty-four-inch barrel, and fitted with a new U.S. Army-issued third-generation starlight scope that had gone astray in Iraq.

  Phem had worked up the gun himself, firing in a backwoods quarry in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He could reliably keep the first round from a cold gun in a one-inch circle at two hundred yards, with the starlight scope. Not an easy thing.

  The .338 was a powerful gun, chosen for its ability to bust through Level IV body-armor plates, the heaviest armor ordinarily worn. Phem had supervised the machining of the solid bronze slugs he’d be using.

  Phem started to hum tunelessly, his body rocking a bit as he sat cross-legged in the dark, the rifle across his thighs.

  Mai said, “Yama—you can do this.”

  “Yes, but no more after this trip,” Phem said. “No more trips.”

  “You know what these people did.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have agreed if I hadn’t known; and also as a tribute to your grandfather. I would do anything he asked now,” Phem said. “In the future, maybe not. I might want to, but I think . . . sometimes, I think I couldn’t do it. My brain would boil up, and I’d be done.”

  “Tai seems fine?”

  Phem nodded and smiled. “Oh, Tai is always fine. He does his research and slips around like a ghost, and the life pleases him.”

  “Well, be at peace,” Mai said. “You are working wonders.”

  She went back to her glasses. At the bottom of the hill, past some oak trees and through a chain-link fence, three hundred and twenty-two meters away, as measured by a laser range-finder, she could see the front door of the country club: Republicans gathering to congratulate themselves on their preparations for the national convention.

  “I haven’t seen Tai,” she said after a while, making conversation.

  “You won’t until he gets back to the truck. He’s a ghost.”

  THEY SAT IN silence as more people gathered, men in black and white, women in every color in the universe, laughing among themselves, kissing, hugging. Mai was amazed at her sex, sometimes, because of the female ability to enjoy power, status, position. Not the ingrown satisfaction shown by males, but an overt celebration, a genuine happiness.

  “Do you expect to see Virgil?” Phem asked.

  “I’m done with Virgil,” she said. She smiled at him in the dark and let her smile seep into her voice. “What are you asking, you old gossip?”

  “Nothing whatever; we all know that the mission comes first,” Phem said.

  “Ah, the mission. Well, I can tell you, Virgil got about as much of this mission as he could possibly tolerate,” she said.

  Phem giggled. “I think he gave as good as he got. You seemed . . . your aura was very smooth when you returned.”

  “You are worse than your mother,” Mai said.

  “My mother . . .” Phem said, and his voice trailed away. Then: “When they find the electronics on the truck, they will be . . . amazed.”

  “Who knows, maybe they’ll never find it,” Mai said.

  “Oh, I think they will. If Sinclair is correct, Virgil is a smart man,” Phem said. “When you vanish, when the investigation is curtailed, he’ll begin to think. He’ll find it eventually.”

  “He is smart, but not that smart, I think,” Mai said.

  MAI LAY BACK in the truck and thought about the mission so far. If they had been sent simply to remove the men, there would have been no problem; but that’s not the way the mission had been briefed. Simple death would not have brought the necessary satisfaction.

  Not to Grandfather, anyway.

  The mission had begun to evolve after Chester Utecht had gotten drunk with several old friends, including one who’d long been paid by the Vietnamese government to keep an ear on the Chinese in Hong Kong. The informant—not a spy, but simply a man who listened, and who occasionally found an envelope with three or four thousand yuan under his door—had told a strange tale of a man who’d stolen a ship full of bulldozers at the end of the war, just before the final victory.

  And with the theft, there’d been murder. The story came out of a drunken fog, and back in Hanoi had rung no bells at first. Instead, the story of the bulldozers and the murder circulated simply as a tale . . . and then an old man, high in the government, heard it. Heard it almost as a joke. Within a day, he’d foll
owed the story back to its source and had identified Utecht.

  The Vietnamese had no desire to disturb the sleep of the Chinese, and so they moved carefully, lifted Utecht, and visited him with a moderate amount of pain before the old man told the story again. But he had only two names other than his own; and one of those names was his son, a name he gave up in croaking horror and despair.

  He’d been left in an alley, dead, and full of alcohol. There’d been no stir at all, no ruffle in the leaves of the Chinese peace.

  The ear had gone to his funeral, with twenty thousand crisp new yuan in his pocket; had seen the younger Utecht, had chatted with him and taken down the details, and sent them along.

  Another twenty thousand, in gratitude, and the investigation moved on. Details were difficult to develop. Then, fortuitously and fortunately, an agent in Indonesia, on an entirely different mission, had found indications of an al-Qaeda effort in San Francisco, with (perhaps) critical munitions shipped from Jakarta through the Golden Gate.

  It was all very foggy, but the Americans’ Homeland Security was needy, in a time of declining budgets and controversial war. An exchange had been made, a liaison forged, one that would be both reliable and deniable. He was a well-known former radical activist with ties to the Vietnamese government, but who’d actually been an active CIA agent from the beginning—a man who could see his comfortable end-life ruined by disclosures from either the American government or the Vietnamese. Further, a man with a daughter, now working in Europe, who could be held over his head, an implicit, unspoken threat . . .

  A man who could be grasped and twisted into the necessary shape for the job.

  A CAR WENT BY at high speed, followed by another car, down the hill, cutting in toward the country club; gathering Republicans turning to stare. Mai watched through the glasses, then lifted a walkie-talkie—an ordinary plastic walkie-talkie that Tai had bought at a sporting goods store—and clicked it four times.

  Two seconds later, listening, two quick clicks.

  She said the same word three times: break break break.

  Phem looked up when he heard the critical abort code, then down the hill at the country club. “What?”

  “We have a problem,” Mai said. She pointed down the hill and said, “See that long blond hair?”

  “Virgil,” Phem breathed.

  One minute later, Tai slipped into the driver’s seat.

  Mai said, “Go.”

  23

  SHRAKE WAS on a date and nobody knew where, and Jenkins said that he never took a cell phone with him because somebody might call him on it. Jenkins had been in a sushi bar, eating octopus and drinking martinis out of a flask, though he said he was totally sober and could be there in ten minutes. Del’s wife was pregnant and going to bed early, so Del had no problem and could be there in fifteen.

  Two extra guys, Virgil thought, should be enough. They agreed to meet at the Pomegranate, a once-trendy salad-and-dessert place seven blocks from the Sinclairs’ condo. Virgil had forgotten to eat, and suddenly realized that he was starving. He got an apple salad and a piece of carrot cake and wolfed them down, saw Jenkins go by in his Crown Vic, looking for a parking place, and then Del in his state Chevy.

  They arrived together. Jenkins got a chocolate mousse and Del said he wasn’t hungry, and Del asked, “What’re we doing?”

  “We need one guy on the back, by the porch. I can point it out from the back side of the house—the condo’s an old house, and it’s got porches on the ground floor. It’s almost like a bunch of town houses. The other two of us go to the front door. The back-door guy is whichever one of you can run fastest.”

  Del looked at Jenkins and said, “You’re pretty quick on your feet.”

  “Yeah, I can do it.”

  Virgil said, “There’s a possibility that these guys are involved in the lemon killings . . . a good possibility. They at least know something about them. So we gotta take care. Know where your weapon is; somebody’s a professional killer. Stay on your toes.”

  “You think . . .” Del’s eyebrows were up. “Maybe some armor?”

  “If you want, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” Virgil said. “It’d be weird if there were any shooting right there. I mean, this guy is semi-famous.”

  “But the daughter is an impostor,” Jenkins said. “Maybe she’s another Clara Rinker.” Clara Rinker had been a professional killer working for a St. Louis mobster, who’d been taken down by Davenport’s team a few years earlier. She was believed to have killed thirty people.

  “Look—do what you’re comfortable with,” Virgil said, gobbling down the last of the carrot cake. “My sense is, we won’t be doing any shooting. But know where your weapon is. If we go in, and there are a couple of Vietnamese guys there . . . then take care. Take care.”

  THEY CIRCLED Sinclair’s block and Virgil pointed out the back of the condo, the porch where Sinclair was working. “There’s somebody in there,” Jenkins said.

  Virgil dug out his binoculars and put them on the lighted porch.

  Sinclair was there, bent over a laptop. “That’s him,” Virgil said. As Virgil watched, Sinclair sat up and stared straight out into the night for three seconds, five seconds, and then went back to the laptop.

  The house that backed onto the condo was also lit. Jenkins said, “I’m gonna knock on the door there, tell them what’s up, so they won’t be yelling at me and calling St. Paul when I sneak through their yard.”

  “All right. Call me when you’re set,” Virgil said.

  Del followed Virgil around the block and they parked, facing in opposite directions in case they had to move quickly, and they met at the walk going up to the condo, waited, and Virgil took the call from Jenkins: “I’m crossing the fence now. I’ll be in position in ten seconds. Sinclair is still in the window.”

  Virgil looked at the names on the mailboxes outside the apartment, picked another one on the first floor, and buzzed. No answer. He waited ten seconds, then buzzed a second one, labeled “Williams.” A moment later, a woman answered: “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Virgil Flowers and Del Capslock. We’re agents of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Could we speak to you for a minute?”

  “What’s happened?” she asked, a streak of fear in her voice. “Did something happen to Laurie?”

  “We just need to speak to you for a minute, ma’am,” Virgil said.

  She buzzed them and Virgil pushed through, and a moment later a door opened to their right and a woman looked out. Virgil put his finger to his lips, showed her his ID, and said, “We’re here for another apartment. If you could go back inside, please. Everything should be okay.”

  The woman’s eyes flicked to Del. Del had taken his pistol out and was holding it along his pant leg. “You’re sure . . .” and she was backing away.

  Virgil put his finger to his lips again, breathed “Shhh . . . ,” and he and Del moved down the hall as the woman closed the door.

  “You want to take the door, or do you want to try knocking?” Del asked.

  “Knock first. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll kick it,” Virgil said.

  Del knocked, and they both stepped back sideways from the door. They heard steps inside, and Del ticked his finger at the door, and Virgil put his hand on his pistol at the small of his back.

  The door opened, and Sinclair looked out. “Took you long enough,” he said. “Come on in.”

  SINCLAIR WAS dressed in faded blue jeans, a soft white shirt, and sneakers, the gold tennis bracelet still rattling around his wrist. Virgil followed him into the apartment as Sinclair backed away. Virgil said to Del, “Get Jenkins in here. Clear the place.”

  “She’s gone, Hoa is gone,” Sinclair said. “I don’t think she’s coming back—you spooked her.”

  “Hoa?”

  “It means ‘flower,’” Sinclair said. “Mai means ‘cherry blossom.’ Quite the coincidence, huh?”

  Jenkins came in through a back door in the kitchen, and he and Del did
a quick run-through of the apartment. Sinclair said to Virgil, “Come on the porch and we can figure out what we’re gonna do. Your friends can sit in.”

  “I know what I’m going to do,” Virgil said. “I’m taking your ass down to jail and I’m charging you with murder.”

  “That’s not a bad idea, except that you’ve got nothing to convict me with,” Sinclair said. He pointed at the circle of chairs on the porch, where his laptop sat in a circle of light. “And there would be some serious fallout that I’m not sure you’d want to deal with. But: If you are willing to deal with the fallout, it’s an option, and we should talk about it.”

  DEL HEARD the last bit of the conversation, and he said to Virgil, “Apartment’s clear,” and then to Sinclair, “What’s up with you? You’re pretty calm for a guy who’s looking at thirty years without parole.”

  “Never do thirty years,” Sinclair said. “My family’s programmed to die at eighty-five. I wouldn’t do more than twenty.”

  Jenkins said to Del, “The man’s got a point.”

  “If anybody wants a beer, we got some Leinenkugels in the refrigerator,” Sinclair said. To Virgil: “You want to sit down?”

  Virgil sat. “What the hell is going on?”

  Sinclair said to Jenkins, “If you’re gonna get a beer, could you get me one?” He said to Virgil, “This is complicated. But one thing that’s going to happen, if it hasn’t already, is that this Warren guy is probably gonna get killed tonight.”

  “Warren’s at a big political party,” Virgil said.

  “Blowing him up at a big political party would just about make Hoa’s day,” Sinclair said. Jenkins handed him a beer, and he said thanks and took a sip.

  “Blowing him up?” Virgil said. He was digging his cell phone out of his pocket. “They’ve got a bomb? Jesus . . .”

  “No, no, not literally. They’re going to shoot him,” Sinclair said. “I don’t know any details, but I believe they’re going to shoot him. The shooter, who’s the guy you met named Phem, doesn’t do bombs. But I’m told he’s a marvelous shot. Olympic quality. And Tai, who’s a researcher, an intelligence operator, an interrogator, doesn’t do assassination. He might tear you apart with a pair of pliers, but he won’t try to snipe you. He doesn’t have that cold temperament—he gets all excited when he’s killing somebody. That’s what I’m told.”