Heat Lightning

hard, and cut across a lawn and then between two houses, around a pool and over a fence, Mai clicking the radio button as they went, never stopping, to a side street, and there was Tai, backing up, reversing down the street, and they were in the back of the truck and it was rolling away.
    Tai asked, “Good shot?”
    “Good shot,” Phem said. “I make no guarantees, but it felt good going out.”
    Mai knew that Warren was dead. She asked, “Are you okay?”
    Phem smiled at her. “You are like my mother. I am okay.”
    Mai turned on the radio, to an all-news station, and they headed north through the welter of streets. They would take I-94 to a twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart store on the northwest edge of the Twin Cities, where Tai would move to another car.
    From there they would continue north up most of the length of Minnesota and along the eastern edge of North Dakota toward Canada, before they cut back into Minnesota for the last page of the assignment.
    The second car was needed should they be stopped by a highway patrolman or a local police officer. They would kill the officer and abandon the known car for the second vehicle.
    After that, they would have no backup.
    But there was no reason that they should be stopped. Both cars were rentals, taken under completely clean IDs from California.
    The entrance ramp came up, and they were gone.

25
    THE ST. PAUL cops came out of the woodwork, from staging areas a block or so back from the golf course, and took up stations along the streets at the perimeters. A deputy chief named Purser said, “A goddamn rat couldn’t get out of there on his hands and knees.”
    Virgil, Davenport, and Rose Marie were inside, looking through the windows up at the hillside golf course. A minute passed, two, without any incoming reports. Virgil said to Davenport, “They’re not up there.”
    Rose Marie asked, “How do you know?”
    “I’m not getting the right vibration,” Virgil said. “When they saw St. Paul coming in, they should have moved. Instantly, before everybody got set. They should have made a break for it. They should have had a backup plan. They should have had somebody on the outside . . . they should have done something.”
    Davenport nodded. “They’re gone—if they were ever here.”
    Virgil dug out his notebook, flipped it open, found Warren’s cell-phone number.
    “What?” Warren’s voice was positively noxious.
    “I’ve got a bad feeling here,” Virgil said. “We dropped the net and nobody made a move. You gotta take it easy. They could be coming after you at your house.”
    “I’m three blocks out,” Warren said. “I got three guys inside and they’re okay, I just talked to them. I got guys patrolling the neighborhood. Nothing going on. We’ll be there in one minute.”
    “Keep your guys awake until we get them,” Virgil said.
    “Yeah. And you know what, Flowers? You can still go fuck yourself.”
    Virgil laughed as he shut his cell phone, stood up, looked out through the front windows at the dark hillside and the golf course. “Guy picked the right job—professional asshole.”
    Davenport said, “You might want to stand back from the window in case they’re still out there. If they’ve really got a sniper scope . . . They might be a little pissed at you.”
    “What about Sinclair?” Virgil asked.
    “I don’t know. I suggest that we put him inside and give him his phone call. He says that’s an option, and after we do it, we should get some kind of response from somebody. Find out who’s in charge, in any case.”
    “What if—” The phone in his hand rang, and he looked down at the LCD: Warren. He flipped it open. “Yeah. Flowers . . .”
    The guy on the other end was shrieking. “We’re taking fire, we’re taking fire. Warren’s down, Warren’s down, he’s dead, we got Minneapolis cops coming, we got medics coming, but we, shit, you better get here.”
    “Ah, man—you’re taking fire right now?”
    “Right now. Right now. I’m in the driveway, I’m under the car, I can hear a fucking machine gun, man, can you hear that?” The guy was shouting again. “Christ, it’s a nightmare, they got fuckin’ machine guns. . . .”
    “Warren’s down?”
    “I’m looking at him, man, his whole fuckin’ head is gone, man, he’s gone, he’s gone, I got blood all over me, I’m drowning in blood, man . . .”
    “We’re on the way, we’re on the way. . . .”
    Virgil looked at Davenport. “They just hit Warren.