"Hot dog," Stryker said.
THEY SLAMMED Virgil's gear in the back of Stryker's Ford, and Stryker called dispatch and told them he'd be out of touch for a while. The dispatcher said, after a pause, "Okay, there." Stryker said to Virgil, "He thinks I'm going to Jesse's for a nooner," and he threw back his head and laughed.
Virgil said, "Not a bad idea."
"Tough choice, fuckin' or fightin'," Stryker said. "In the long run, I prefer fuckin', but at any given moment, fightin' can while away the hours."
THEY MADE the run to Worthington in half an hour. The feds had taken over the end of one wing of the Holiday Inn, and Virgil and Stryker were stopped by agents when they tried to walk back. One of the agents spoke into a radio, then nodded at them, and said, "Last room on the right."
THEY FOUND PIRELLI in a meeting room with twenty other agents, all in jeans, short-sleeved shirts, and ball caps. Pirelli was standing next to a pull-down projection screen, and the agents were on folding chairs, facing it, like a kindergarten class with guns. In the middle of them, a computer was sitting on a stand with a PowerPoint projector.
Pirelli said, over the heads of the agents, "You're just in time for the movies," and to the agents, "This is Jim Stryker, sheriff of Stark County, the man with the hat, and Virgil Flowers, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, with…what kind of T-shirt, Virgil?"
Virgil pulled opened his coat to show off the Arcade Fire shirt.
"What the hell is Arcade Fire?" asked a Latino-looking dude with a New York accent.
"World's best hurdy-gurdy band," Virgil said.
PIRELLI SAID, "Guys, you've been briefed, I just want to talk about the territory a bit more, while we're waiting, and now that we have local people here. We've scouted it, we've flown it, we don't anticipate any huge trouble, but we gotta be ready. John Franks and Roger Kiley have long histories…" He paused, then said to Virgil and Stryker, "Franks is the guy bringing the stuff down from the ethanol plant; Kiley is at Feur's place now. He and a couple of other guys hang out there, patrolling around. We don't have IDs on the others."
"A guy named Trevor," Virgil said. "Last time I saw him, he had a Remington pump."
Pirelli stepped to the computer and projector, brought up an image on the screen, and did a search for "Trevor." A moment later, a "Trevor Rich" popped up, with a police ID photo from Wichita Falls, Texas.
"That's him," Virgil said, looking into Trevor's blank eyes.
Pirelli pulled up some text and read it for them: "Armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, terroristic threats. Ex-wife has been missing for four years; nobody knows where she went…he says California. If he goes back inside, he stays."
"He looked like such a nice boy," Virgil said.
"Kiley and Franks are the same deaclass="underline" guns, trouble, and severely pissed off at the government," Pirelli said. "We've got to get right on top of them."
"How are you going to do that?" Virgil asked.
"That's a little complicated," Pirelli said.
THE COMPLICATION INVOLVED getting both Feur and the dope at the house at the same time. They had an observation plane overhead, watching the dope, along with two cars tracking it on the ground, and an electronic position finder planted on the truck itself.
"We want Feur on the premises. Then we grab the dope before they can do anything with it," Pirelli said. He went back to the computer keyboard and pulled up a satellite view of Feur's farm. "We don't know exactly where they'll move the stuff, but we think it's likely that they'll put it in this shed, rather than in the house," he said, touching the garage/shop with a red dot from a laser pointer. To Virgil and Stryker: "When we met in Mankato, you said that when Dale Donald Evans loaded gas cans, he backed up to the shed. We expect Franks to do the same thing, to unload.
"As soon as Franks is in the yard, we hit them," Pirelli continued, circling the yard with the laser dot. "We can time that right down to the minute, where we come off the interstate. Even if they see us coming over the top of the rise"-he touched a terrain feature on the satellite photo-"they'll have less than a minute of reaction time. If we can catch them in the yard, they're toast. We had a guy go by, take some high-res photos of that shed. It doesn't look like much. If they try to fight from it, we can take them out. The house is even shakier…"
"You don't want a massacre," Stryker said.
"Nope. We want to catch them in a helpless condition, so they quit," Pirelli said.
"Are you sure about the meth?" Stryker asked. "That they're bringing meth down from South Dakota?"
"Yes," Pirelli said flatly. "That lab at the ethanol plant; best meth lab any of us have ever seen in the States. They've got some as good down in Mexico, but nothing better."
Virgil piped up: "That shop might be a little harder than you think."
Pirelli raised an eyebrow: "Yeah?"
"It's got new Medeco locks and steel doors. Hardly any point, if the thing has cardboard walls."
"Have you been inside?" Pirelli asked.
"Of course not. That would be illegal, without a warrant," Virgil said.
"We got stuff that'd take down those doors like they were tissue paper," one of the agents said.
"Sure, when you decide to," Virgil said. "But if Franks has ten gas cans in his truck, with twenty gallons in gas and the rest in crank, and if he has time to unload the crank and stir it around in the gas, he could have a nice little campfire in there and run out with his hands over his head…Maybe you need to order up a fire truck."
Pirelli said, "We gotta be on top of them before he can unload. We will be less than a minute behind him, and he'll have no reason to hurry. With any luck, he'll want to take a leak before he unloads."
"I hope," Virgil said. "But it worries me."
"With these kinds of deals," Pirelli said, "there's always about a twenty-eight percent chance of a disaster. That's just the way it is. However we have to do it, these guys are worth eliminating." He looked at the satellite picture, then said to Virgiclass="underline" "But you're right. It's worth worrying about."
THEY STOOD AROUND talking to the agents, then Virgil borrowed Pirelli's laser pointer, and Virgil and Stryker went over the ground around the house-a ditch here, a big rock there, where they could site long guns.
There was a long seam of darker grass extending from the barn area, up the hill, and into a clump of brush southeast of the farmstead. One of the agents asked if it were a ditch that could be used to approach the houses.
"Don't know," Stryker said. "We did our recon on the north side."
Pirelli was on the phone with somebody doing surveillance on the two target cars as they approached Feur's farm. One of them was working the math on a simultaneous arrival, and at twelve-forty, Pirelli said, "North side, take off."
Six agents got up, and walked out.
Pirelli said, "Five minutes, guys. We're on the road in ten. Drivers, fast, but no lights. Keep spaced out right until we're at the exit, then close up tight. You know all this, so let's remember it. Everybody: be careful. We don't want to lose anybody out there, and this is a tough bunch. Virgil, Jim, you hang back a little-not way back, but a little back. We've choreographed the entry, here."
Five minutes later, Pirelli said, "Let's mount up," and they streamed out of the room, no jokes, no talk.
Moving fast.
19
BEFORE THEY SETTLED in the trucks, Virgil and Stryker squeezed into standard-duty body armor. Though it wouldn't stop any heavy loads, it'd be good against shotguns and pistols. Some of the DEA guys were wearing heavier stuff: they'd be the first in.
Stryker asked Virgil to drive: "I want to be able to work the radios to my guys-just in case."
FROM THE WORTHINGTON on-ramp to the exit nearest Feur's place was thirty-five minutes at legal interstate speeds, half an hour at the normal illegal driving pace. Pirelli, talking to his outside pacemaker, modulated the speed of the DEA trucks, seven of them, all blacked-out GMC Yukons.