Heat Lightning

“You can’t… this is our jurisdiction,” the governor began.

“There’s been a tragedy, but a minor one,” Cartwright said. “What was done was necessary. We may have saved hundreds of lives. If the al-Qaeda plan had gone through…”

The governor said, “I can’t accept-”

Arenson snapped: “Let me say it again, in case you didn’t get it the first time: we’re not asking you, we’re telling you. What part of telling don’t you understand?”

THERE WAS A moment of silence, then the governor cleared his throat and said, “Rose Marie, Neil, Lucas, Virgil, let me talk to you in Rose Marie’s office for a moment.” He stood up and said to the two Washington guys, “Just take a moment. I think we can come to a satisfactory resolution of this.”

The governor led the way out the door and down the hall to Rose Marie’s office, closed the door behind Virgil, the last one in, then turned and bellowed, “Those MOTHERFUCKERS think they can come into MY state and kill MY people and they tell me that THEY’RE saying how it is? They don’t tell ANYBODY how it is in MY state… I say how it is-they don’t say a FUCKIN’ THING.”

The governor raged on and Virgil looked away, embarrassed. The tantrum lasted a full thirty seconds, then the governor, breathing hard, red-faced, looked around, looked at Rose Marie, looked at Mitford, and Mitford smiled and said, “Glad we got that cleared up.”

“What are we going to do?” the governor asked him, his voice rough from the tantrum.

Mitford shrugged. “You’re a liberal, God bless your obscenely rich little soul. How does it hurt you to go up against a bunch of fascists from Homeland Security?”

“Uh-oh. What are you thinking?” Rose Marie asked.

Mitford said to the governor, “You don’t have much political runway left here in Minnesota. What will you do when you’re not governor anymore?”

“I thought I’d just be a rich guy,” the governor said. “If somebody dies, I could run for the Senate.”

“Will that make you happy?” Mitford asked.

“Neil, skip the dime-store psychology,” the governor said. “What are you thinking?”

“We could arrest these two guys and charge them with conspiracy to commit murder in the planned execution of five Minnesotans, with two more murdered in the process. Before anybody has time to react, you have a press conference. You give an Abe Lincoln speech about protecting our precious freedoms, about how we don’t turn our laws over to a bunch of Vietnamese killers. You’d take some heat, but by this time next week, you’d be a national name. You’re on the cover of Time magazine. You’d be a hero to a lot of people in the party. Play your cards right over the next four years…”

The governor looked at him a long time, then said, “What’s the downside?”

Rose Marie said, “They arrest you for treason and you’re executed.”

The governor laughed and said, “Really.” That didn’t worry him; he was far too rich to hang.

Davenport turned to Virgil: “You did turn off that recorder, didn’t you?”

Virgil said, “Jeez, boss… I forgot.”

Davenport: “Wonder what they’re in there saying?”

“They already said enough,” Virgil said. “But… I wouldn’t be surprised if they said a few more things. Being in there by themselves.”

THEY ALL contemplated him for a few seconds, then Rose Marie shook her head, turned to the governor, and said, “Neil raises an interesting possibility. But you would take some heat. A lot of people think security is all-important-they’d absolutely throw six or eight people overboard if it might stop an al-Qaeda attack. As long as it wasn’t them getting thrown.”

“That can be handled,” Mitford said. “That’s all PR. Our PR against their PR, and we’ll have a big head start. Do it right, and they’ll be cooked before they can even decide what to do. We’re talking televised congressional hearings.”

The governor mulled it over, then cocked an eye at Mitford. “A national name by next week?”

“Guaranteed.”

Rose Marie said, “A national name isn’t the same as a national hero. Lee Harvey Oswald is a national name. Benedict Arnold-”

Mitford snarled, “You think I’m so lame with the PR that we’d wind up as Benedict Arnold? For Christ’s sakes, Rose Marie, I ran the negative side in the last campaign.”

“I’m just saying,” she said.

The governor said, “Let’s sit here and think about it for two minutes. All right? Two minutes.”

At the end of the two minutes, the governor covered Rose Marie’s hand with his own and said, “Weren’t you getting a little bit bored? How long has it been since we’ve been in a really dirty fight?”

“You got me there,” she said.

THEY TROOPED BACK into the conference room, where Arenson and Cartwright were slouched in their chairs, barely containing their impatience. The governor said, “Virgil?”

Virgil said to Cartwright and Arenson, “Well, guys, I’ve got some bad news.”

Cartwright: “What’s that?”

Virgil threw his arms wide, gave them his best Hollywood grin, and said, “You’re under arrest for murder.”

28

THE CONSPIRACY-to-murder charges were filed with Ramsey County, although, when he learned the circumstances, the Ramsey County attorney got nauseous and had to be excused to a quiet place, where he could curl up with his blankie.

Mitford put together the PR package in two hours, and the press conference was held in the rotunda of the Capitol, with an oversized American flag, borrowed from a fast-food franchise, hanging in the background. The governor gave the Abe Lincoln speech, provided family photos and testimonials from the loved ones of the two innocent men who were killed, as well as crime-scene photos of the five men executed by the Vietnamese for the crime in Vietnam.

Davenport tipped friends at TV stations and the newspapers, and after the press conference-a sensation that quickly spread from Minnesota to the evening talk shows in Washington-they’d perp-walked the two Homeland Security guys, something that was never done, so there was lots of film available.

After the perp walk, they gave the two guys the mandatory phone call.

THE U.S. ATTORNEY served a habeas corpus on the Ramsey jail six hours after Cartwright and Arenson went inside, and put them on a plane to Washington, where they became unavailable for comment.

Mitford had a package of the local crime scenes and family photos on an earlier plane, to the same destination, a half hour after the governor’s press conference. When the Homeland Security fanboys went on the Washington political shows, they were greeted with the photos and “How do you explain this?”

A few tried to float the idea that although this was a fantasy dreamed up by a longtime opponent of the administration, that if it hadn’t been a fantasy, it would have been a pretty good deal, giving up these six criminal Americans while saving all those hypothetical lives somewhere on the West Coast.

That didn’t fly worth a damn. How many hypothetical people died, anyway? Then an Internet guy in Indonesia learned that one of the Indonesian al-Qaeda plotters ran a lawn service, and posted a photo showing the man pushing an ancient Lawn-Boy. There was an international guffaw at the expense of Homeland Security.

Blah-blah-blah-blah.

In the end-after two weeks, anyway-Mitford was proven correct. The governor was a national figure, both