“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.