Storm Front

HE RURAL LANDSCAPE in Turkey and the rural landscape in Minnesota differed in one fundamental way: the roads in Turkey followed the contours of the land and connected specific places to each other. The Minnesota roads—the smaller roads, anyway—were built on a grid, with little regard for the movement of the land. The Turks found this disorienting. In Turkey, if you wanted to go somewhere, a road usually led directly to it. In Minnesota, you could often see your objective, but getting there was another matter, and often meant a series of zigzag turns until you found the road that went through that place.
    In the case of Jones’s cabin, they could see where they wanted to go, but couldn’t get there in the car, without giving themselves away. They wound up leaving the car in a roadside pull-off, and after consulting with their iPad, walking through swampy ground around the south end of the lake where Jones was hiding. Their iPad didn’t show the minor vagaries of the route: on the way, they pushed through some stinging plants, which left little white dots on their hands and arms that itched like fire; and they stepped on patches of what looked like solid ground, only to find themselves up to their knees in muck. The smaller Turk momentarily lost an Italian loafer in the stuff, and when he managed to retrieve it, it smelled like rotten eggs.
    And it was hot. Turkey could get hot, but this was hot and humid, and in crossing through the woods, sweating, they stirred up clouds of mosquitoes, which attacked like hawks. Pursued by mosquitoes, stung by nettles, ruining their shoes and slacks, they became annoyed, to the extent of about a nine on a one-to-ten scale, where eight was “murderous.”
    And they were not quiet.
    They didn’t know exactly where they were going, and they kept detouring around fallen timber, and crunching through some kind of heavy reed that grew in swampy areas. Then they were there.
    They knew they were there because Jones shouted, “Who is that? Who’s there?”
    As luck would have it, Jones’s car was parked thirty meters from the front of the small wooden cabin, and they’d emerged halfway between them. They could see Jones standing in the doorway, looking toward the area where they were standing. He had what looked like a pistol in his hand.
    The smaller Turk said, “He has a gun.”
    Kaya said, “A warning shot.” He lifted his pistol and fired a shot over the roof of the cabin.
    Jones threw himself sideways, and Kaya was about to call to him, when glass broke in a window left of the door, and Kaya saw what appeared to be the barrel of a gun, and BOOM, from the muzzle flash, the blast, and the sound of a falling tree limb, he knew he was no longer dealing with snake shot. He dropped and rolled into the roadside weeds, which he would later discover were called “poison ivy,” and from there scrambled back into the trees.
    “Go away,” Jones shouted.
    The smaller Turk fired two shots into the cabin, and Jones fired back, a shot right through the wall of the cabin, spraying wood splinters up the driveway, but missing the Turks by a good measure.
    Kaya said, “I will move closer to talk to him. You cover—”
    The smaller Turk fired two shots into the cabin roof, moved sideways, fired another one, moved again.
    Kaya was getting closer, and did a peek from behind a tree, saw a fallen log that looked like a good place to negotiate from. He dropped to his knees and crawled toward it, shook a sapling as he passed. That was one sapling too many and Jones fired at it, low, and Kaya felt the stinging impact in his buttocks. He rolled and scrambled deeper in the woods, and reached back, to touch the wound. His hand came back bloody. He called to the smaller Turk, “This donkey’s asshole has shot me.”
    The smaller Turk, well covered by a burr oak, emptied his pistol at the cabin and then ran through the deeper woods, in a semicircular path, until he came back to Kaya. He knelt next to the big man and asked, “How bad?”
    “In the back. Can’t see it . . .”
    “Roll over.”
    The smaller Turk looked at the bigger Turk’s butt and said, “Not bad, but it will hurt.”
    “Did it go through?”
    “It didn’t go in. It’s a trough. A bad cut.”
    “Then a bandage will work. We should go.”
    “Yes.”
    “Before we do that . . .” The big Turk pushed himself up, braced against a tree, and emptied his pistol at the cabin. “God-damn him,” he said. He limped away,