Bob Lee Swagger’s oldest daughter dreams of working for the Washington Post. For now, she works for a regional paper in Bristol, that odd town that straddles the border of Virginia and Tennessee. And it is home to a favored stop on the NASCAR circuit.
Nikki has sniffed out some big goings on in the Tennessee mountains. On her way down the back roads, a beefed up Charger tries to run her off the road to certain death rolling down the steep overlooks. But Nikki has some skills from her motorcycle days at home in Idaho and manages not to get away, but at least far enough down the mountain to avoid the crushing rolls, ending up in a coma in a local hospital, but her notes, laptop, and phone are damaged beyond repair.
The word comes quickly to Bob Lee’s Idaho ranch. His concern stretches to whether she was targeted for some past transgression of his and heads to Bristol to help care for Nikki and poke around. Detective Thelma Fielding thinks it was just some wild kid imitating his favorite NASCAR driver and the accident was just that, a random accident. Bob Lee has other ideas.
He enlists the old Marine network to look at photos of the skid marks and comes to find out that a pretty decent driver on the tour is a Marine (remember, there is not such thing as an ex-Marine). Mac McCready and his crew chief look at the photos and conclude the driver really knew what he was doing and Nikki was targeted and not a random accident.
Turns out, the eastern Tennessee mountains are a hotbed of meth labs. So Bob Lee thinks that was what she was checking into. He also starts to notice an occasional tail following him around the area. And the family name of Grumley pops up. Reverend Grumley is the patriarch of a clan of inbreds who run a “Baptist Bible Camp” (wink, wink). Maybe this paragon of humanity is running meth out of the mountains.
Some nifty work by a local geek on a damaged hard drive reveals a piece of a phone number and some even niftier detective work matches the phone number to a nearby gun shop. Bob Lee is also confused by a cryptic code Mk. 2:11. A lot of Bible study fails to come up with what this means. When Bob Lee (with some help from new friends) figures out that Mk 2:11 really is the brand of a Norwegian armor piercing 50 caliber round, the Reverend puts out a hit order on Bob Lee. Problem is, we all know Bob Lee isn’t an ordinary father worrying about his daughter. He has . . . how should we say . . . skills. Two of the inbreds follow him to a country store where Bob Lee takes them out and leaves a scared kid to take the credit. Two others track him to his daughter’s apartment and he takes them out, too (after being alerted by a scared, but brave 12yo Cambodian girl destined to be raped by one of the Grumley boys. I said they were inbred).
The FBI (Bob Lee’s good friend Nick Memphis) is now on the case and they put 2 and 2 together to figure out that the bad guys are not about meth. The ammunition is for a hit on the armored car that will be carrying the cash from the concessions at the Bristol NASCAR race, to the tune of around $8mil.
The race ends and in the post-race traffic jam, the Grumley’s blow open the armored car, juice up the diesel engine and bush-whack to the nearest mountain where a helocopter will meet up to take the Grumley’s and the cash on a tree-top flight out of the state. The shoot out at the race occupies the FBI and Special Agent Memphis is injured. But Bob Lee has his daughter’s motorcycle and goes overland to follow the Grumley’s up the mountain. The ensuing shootout is child’s play as Bob the Nailer takes out the Grumley’s one by one. The cash-filed helicopter has just lifted off and Bob Lee grabs the 50 caliber gun, nails the ‘copter that almost gracefully falls into the emptying stands of the racecourse, spilling all that cash.
Done, got the bad guys and prevented the theft. He turns around only to come face to face with the brains behind the operation (you didn’t think a bunch of in breds could dream this up did you?). He stands facing Detective Thelma Fielding, multi-year winner of the Area 5 USPSA fast draw pistol competition. Bob Lee has seen her draw and knows she is fast. They face off on the top of the mountain ridge, both knowing what is coming . . . Midnight at the OK Corral, Tennessee style. Bob the Nailer drops Fielding where she stands. The last words she hears are, “Area 7 USPSA champ five years running. Nobody ever called me slow.”
Epilogue: the guy who ran Nikki off the road gets away. The NASCAR Marine McCready tells Bob Lee he is sure he knows who the guy is . . . his brother, a genius driver and mechanic who was thrown out of NASCAR because he had killed another driver in a race . . . their father. The nut wants revenge on Bob Lee and follows him down a mountain road and just as he is about to do the deed, Bob Lee slams on the brakes and drops back, revealing that he is following Mac McCready, who eyes his brother and pushes him off the cliff. Now it’s done. And of course, Nikki comes out of her coma.
As I said once before, Bob Lee in my new hero. Hunter is bookmarked on my computer and firmly planted in my power rotation. This one runs right along at back straightaway pace. OK, the plot to rob NASCAR might seem a little far-fetched, but who cares. I'm hooked. A couple day read at best, it goes that fast. It's on Kindle, too. From a few references in the book, I may be looking up some earlier Hunter titles about Bob Lee’s dad, Earl, from his days as an Arkansas lawman..
Sort of signing off for a few weeks. Don’t see how I can work, watch the World Cup, and keep up with my reading. Once the World Cup gets out of the group stage and there are no more multi-game days on ESPN, I can get back to it.
East Coast Don
ECD
ReplyDeleteGood review, and it was an enjoyable read.
WCD