Burch put a finger to his lips. “We really need you to wait here. Believe me, you’re going to get a lot of credit in our reports. You wait here, talk to Flowers on your cell phone. If anything critical comes up, we’ll leave a radio. You call me.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about credit,” she said, her lips barely moving, rage burning through her. In her mind’s eye, she saw the porn films again, the scared children, the predatory adults. “I want in.”
But Burch wasn’t having any of it. “We’re doing this military style. You know the area, so you call me. Any communication you get from your office, even from Flowers goes through you. I’m not taking any other calls. Only from you. You got that? Pass it on to Flowers. We have to run this tight. He calls you. You pass on the important information. Same with any calls from your sheriff. We do this my way.”
Five minutes after they pulled over, and five hundred yards down the road from Drake’s house, the SWAT team, with Burch at the point, slouched up the shoulder of the road, looking more like a squad of SEALs in Afghanistan than a bunch of cops in Montana.
And she was stuck back here.
Her teeth ground together and she had trouble reminding herself that being a cop was being a part of a team. Maybe Santana was right, maybe she should quit. She didn’t need this shit.
But she loved it.
Flowers called again. “Where in the fuck are you guys? Something’s going on. You gotta get up here. Drake is ready to move.”
She reined in her frustration and tried to be rational. The important thing was to take down Drake.
“The troops are on the way in, on foot,” she said into the phone. “They’re five hundred yards down the road. They’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Can you call them?”
“I can.”
Virgil said, “Tell them that. Hey, what the hell is he doing, Johnson? What? Sorry, talking to Johnson. What? Fuck. Look, Drake is up to something. He’s loading up the Jeep, if a Jeep comes down the road, that’ll be him.”
“I’ll pass it on,” Regan said. “Hang tight, they’re coming.”
VIRGIL AND JOHNSON WERE ON the far side of the shallow river, up on the bluff, looking down at Drake’s cabin. They saw him throw what looked like a couple of large duffel bags into the Jeep, along with a rifle. Dusk crept through the trees and crawled across the land.
Drake was moving fast, jogging from the house to the studio cabin, where he spent a minute or two, then back to the house and then to the garage. He was carrying something bulky, but they didn’t have binoculars and couldn’t really tell what it was.
“He’s carrying it like suitcases, but they look too small to be suitcases,” Virgil said to Johnson. “I think we’ve got to work in closer.”
“He could see us. The slope’s mostly rock, not much cover. The feds are just down the road. I kinda like this cop shit, as long as I don’t have to look at bodies. Maybe I oughta get deputized when I get back home.”
“You have no qualifications, except possibly some insight into the criminal mind,” he said.
“Don’t need any qualifications to get deputized,” Johnson said. “I’d say about two hundred dollars ought to get me a badge.”
“Where in the fuck are the feds?” Virgil asked, getting a bad feeling about this.
Drake jogged back to the house from the garage, no longer carrying the suitcases. They could see him through the front windows of the houses, apparently waving another set of the squatty suitcases around.
“Ah, Jesus,” he said squinting. “Those aren’t suitcases. Those are gas cans. He’s getting ready to torch the place.”
“And the feds don’t know it.”
He speed-dialed Pescoli.
She picked up on the first ring.
“He’s gonna torch the place,” he warned. “You got no time, tell the feds, they got no time. He’s gonna torch the place right now.”
“I’m calling them.”
And she was gone.
Down below, Drake hurried out of the house with a handful of what might be paper or rags, ran to the garage, lit whatever it was with a lighter, then threw the flaming ball into the garage. With a whoosh, the building exploded into flames.
“Damn,” Virgil whispered as the building was engulfed.
Drake had apparently doused the BMW, which began burning with enthusiasm. The conflagration crackled to the sky, smoke and flames spiraling upward.
“Where the hell are they?” He searched beyond the inferno, looking for the SWAT team. “Where the fuck are they? I gotta do something.”
“You heard Burch,” Johnson reminded him.
Drake’s next stop was the studio.
Johnson said to Virgil, “Gimme my gun. Maybe I can make him dodge around until the cops get here.”
He didn’t stop to think about it and handed the gun over. The range was ridiculous for Johnson’s concealed-carry, short-nosed nine. But Johnson opened fire, and Drake froze for a moment, then threw a handful of burning whatever into the studio. The building exploded just as the garage had, flames twisting and hissing. Johnson fired fifteen times, but Drake ignored it, ran to the house, threw in the last ball of fire, and the house, obviously doused in gasoline as the other buildings went up quick, flames reaching skyward, lighting the area.
Virgil hit speed dial to Pescoli. “He’s on the move.”
“Where?” she asked, her own voice rising. “What the hell is happening?”
“He did it, he burned the place. Where is the team?”
“It’s there. It should be there.”
“Oh, crap. Drake’s gone for the Jeep,” he said, watching as Drake hopped into the rig and tore out, spraying gravel and speeding away, not toward the main road and into the SWAT team.
“He’s in the Jeep, heading away from the main road. Driving toward the dead end. Where is he going?”
He watched the vehicle stop at the Weekses’ place, though with the coming darkness and trees, his sight line wasn’t clear. He heard shouting and within seconds flames shot skyward.
“He just blew up the Weekses’ mobile home.”
“Where is he? Still there?” she asked, her voice tense.
“I can’t see. Call Burch. Tell him.”
She hung up and Virgil said to Johnson, “Bet we find a body in Weekses’ place.”
“No bet,” Johnson said.
Below them, they spied the headlights of what had to be Drake’s Jeep, heading due west, away from the main road, toward the dead end.
“Where the fuck is he going?”
Virgil had a sinking feeling. He called Pescoli and when she picked up, said, “Is there some kind of timber road at the end of the dead end? A logging or mining road? Something that no one uses?”
He heard the yelling of the SWAT team now.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” There was dread in her voice. “Yes. The Long Mining company had some access road here, been closed for years.”
“Why else take off in the Jeep? Why torch the BMW? The faster vehicle.”
“I’ll call Burch.”
Again she rang off.
“You’re probably right,” Johnson, who’d overheard his part of the conversation, said.
“Here come the feds.”
Below them the SWAT team streamed up the road toward the burning buildings, in good military order.
One minute too late.