Norco '80

by Peter Houlahan

  Chris Harven hit the accelerator and the truck disappeared around a tight curve. 302, I got a bad curve coming up here, what are they doing? Evans asked, nervous enough now to have begun addressing Bender by the incorrect call number 302 instead of 320. 302, can you get him? I can’t see him, he asked seconds later when he did not receive a reply the first time.

  He’s still movin’, he’s still movin’, Bender relayed, but the delay in getting the information to Evans had been almost fifteen seconds.

  Above them, 40-King-1 was fighting worsening conditions. In addition to more and more pine stands blocking his view, pilot Ed Mabry had the narrow canyon and descending cloud cover to contend with while trying to reposition the chopper to maintain a visual on the truck.

  The road flattened out and cut in where water runoff had eroded a wide cleavage in the hillside. Sweeping back on the other side of the gully, Chris Harven slowed the truck as Manny and Russ stood up in the bed and fired across the mouth of the ravine at their pursuers. Again, the sound of the gunshots echoed back and forth off the canyon walls. The truck headed up a steep incline directly across from Evans. Evans spotted an opportunity and tried to have a message relayed to the SBSO unit with the automatic weapon. That San Bernardino unit, if you can come up, you can catch them going up that ridgeline over there with the mountain backdrop. Evans had no idea that the San Bernardino unit he was trying to reach was the one directly behind him.

  Still down on Stockton Flats with the CLEMARS, Don Bender heard a barrage of gunshots echoing down off the mountainside. Are they up that hill to the left?

  Yeah, take the left turn, the left turn, Evans answered, accelerating across the slide area and continuing up the grade a hundred yards behind the truck. Evans increased his speed to twenty-five miles an hour and watched as the truck disappeared around a bend to the right leading into a straight, sharp ascent. 302, are they movin? he asked Bender. There was no reply. Fifteen seconds later, Evans came around the bend and had his answer.

  Okay, we’re hit! Evans screamed into the mic so sharply it distorted the transmission, making it almost unintelligible. But everyone who heard it knew that something very bad had just happened.

  Jim, talk.

  Evans, you there?

  Edward-20, unit with Evans?

  Evans, are they in the truck?

  Evans, who is in the truck?

  There was no answer. There was no one left in the truck.

  SEATED IN THE BED OF A STOLEN PICKUP TRUCK COMING AROUND THAT FINAL bend, George Wayne Smith was finally able to see the magnitude of what he had created. A quarter mile away on the far side of the wide ravine, Baldy Notch Road descended like a ribbon draped across the mountainside. All the way down to Stockton Flats, law enforcement vehicles were snaking up the road, light bars whirling red and blue like a trail of electric ants. It might not have been how he wanted it, but for the first time in his life George was part of something huge, just like he always knew he would be.

  Behind the wheel, Chris Harven leaned forward and checked the sky to get a visual on the helicopter that had been tracking them all the way up the canyon. He found it 1,500 feet overhead, hovering out over the canyon above Stockton Flats. The road beneath his wheels was as steep as it could possibly be now, the tires alternately slipping and gripping the coarse rock, spinning, kicking stones and dirt behind it. Chris pushed the F-250 into third gear as he gained traction up the grade, deciding he would use the straight stretch of road ahead to make a run for the cloud cover. He stole another glance out the side window to find the chopper, but a line of enormous pines on the downslope blocked his view. The next time he looked through the windshield, the road in front of him was completely gone. In its place was a fifty-foot-wide stretch of the mountainside that had given way, taking Baldy Notch Road with it.

  Harven hammered on the brakes and leapt from the truck holding the Long Colt revolver. Debark! he yelled. Everybody out! We have to hoof it from here.

  Manny Delgado vaulted the tailgate and stood behind the truck, leveling the barrel of Chris’s Heckler down the road. Manny wasn’t going anywhere. Russ scrambled over the side cabinets and positioned himself at the driver’s-side rear of the truck with the “Shorty” AR. George crawled over the tailgate and fell to the ground, got up, and lifted the Heckler .308 to his hip. The three stood at the rear of the truck aiming their assault rifles at the empty road behind them, waiting. A few seconds later, the first cop car appeared.

  The explosion of gunfire from all three rifles was instantaneous and overwhelming, the reports echoing off the canyon walls, multiplying the muzzle blasts into a solid cacophony of sound. With nothing but the Long Colt, Chris turned and began to head up the road, but something slammed into his back with such force that it knocked the wind out of him and threw him forward onto the dirt. He lay there gulping air, trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. There was a burning sensation in his back, just below the shoulder blade. Chris Harven realized he had just been shot.

  THE INSTANT JIM EVANS TURNED THE BEND, HE SAW THE MUZZLE FLASHES coming from three men standing seventy-five feet in front of him. A round crashed through the passenger side of his windshield and exploded out the rear window. Okay, we’re hit! he called into his radio mic as he threw open his door. As Evans dove from the vehicle, three more rounds came through his windshield on the driver’s side. Any one of them would have been a direct head shot had Evans still been behind the wheel. In an instant, Evans was on his feet behind the protection of the V of the open car door with his .38 revolver drawn. Evans turned and assumed a defensive combat firing stance, peeling off rounds—Pop! Pop! Pop!—as he shuffle-stepped to the rear of his patrol unit. Once there, he dropped to one knee, ejected the spent shell casings from the .38, and used a speed loader to quickly reload six live rounds into the cylinder of the revolver.

  Evans did not know it, but he had just done something remarkable. Using a .38 revolver while under heavy fire, Jim Evans had hit his target from a range of seventy-five feet, striking Chris Harven several inches below the left shoulder blade and knocking him to the dirt.

  D. J. McCarty saw it all happening in front of him as though watching a movie through the windshield of the Fairlane. One second they were following the RSO unit around a bend in the road and the next he was being thrown forward as McPheron slammed on the brakes. “He’s bailing out,” McPheron yelled as he flung the driver’s door open and leapt out himself. Alone in the passenger seat, D.J. saw the Riverside deputy dive out of his vehicle just as the rear windows of the RSO unit exploded. McCarty tried to process the activity unfolding before him as he gripped the unloaded M16, his eyes riveted on the deputy discharging his revolver as he retreated to the rear of the unit.

  As Evans ducked behind his vehicle to reload, McCarty saw a gunman with wild, bushy hair rise up off to the right, one foot on the hillside, aiming his rifle down over Evans’s unit. He could make out two figures farther up the hill near the rear of the truck, both with rifles. Don’t come back up in the same place you went down, McCarty thought, watching Evans reload.

  An instant later, Evans came up again to fire. D.J. saw his head suddenly jerk back. Evans spun to his right, discharging a round from his .38 into the dirt as he fell, a spray of liquid ejecting out from the area of his head. As he went down, D.J. could see a massive hole in his face. And then Jim Evans disappeared, falling dead just feet in front of the hood of McCarty’s unit.

  The rounds that came crashing through the windshield of McCarty’s patrol unit a moment later were a continuation of the volley that had just killed Jim Evans. The first punched a hole through the safety glass high on the right side and dug into the roof of the Fairlane. McCarty let go of the M16 and rolled to his left, lifting his right arm to shield his face. When the second round came through, D.J. saw the sleeve of his red windbreaker puff out as the bullet tore a chunk of soft tissue off the inside of his right elbow.

  McCarty knew he needed to get out of the car or he would
die there. Sitting up quickly, he grabbed the handle to the passenger door and kicked it open. Rounds immediately struck the front quarter panel of the Fairlane and the side of the open door. Forgetting about the M16 now lying on the seat beside him, D.J. tried to unlatch the shotgun from its mount at the center of the dashboard, but the maneuver required two hands to perform, so he gave up. With a cascade of gunfire echoing off the canyon walls and rounds hissing overhead, D.J. made a desperate crawl across the front seat and spilled out the driver’s side onto the dirt roadway, unarmed. There was another burst of gunfire, even closer this time as rounds struck off the roadbed. Out of options and certain he would be killed at any moment, D.J. did the only thing he could think of: He began to dig.

  Even with the low clearance of the Ford Fairlane, McCarty somehow managed to clear away enough of the loose roadbed to get most of his body underneath the patrol unit. Lying on his stomach, he heard McPheron calling to him from the rear of the vehicle. “D.J., are you all right? Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay, but I don’t have a weapon,” McCarty called back. There was another volley of gunfire, this time the muzzle blasts sounding much closer than they had before. They’re coming to execute me, he thought. “Mac, give me a gun,” he yelled back to his partner. There was no reply from McPheron. D.J. turned his head to see if he could spot the legs of the suspects from underneath the vehicle. What he saw instead was the body of Jim Evans lying in the road, his glasses shattered beside him and a gaping wound where his right eye socket had been. Please, God, don’t let me end up like that, D.J. thought. That’s when he remembered the M16.

  Clawing his way out from under the Fairlane, McCarty reached up and blindly swept his hand over the front seat searching for the weapon. He grabbed ahold of the barrel of the gun, and the M16 and two magazines fell out onto the dirt beside him. McCarty shoved one of the magazines into the bottom of the weapon. He grabbed the bolt and pulled it back to chamber a round, but the magazine just fell out onto the dirt. Bullets struck the road around him. He tried it again. The magazine fell out again. He looked into the breech and saw that the rod had failed to forward the round. If this thing is broken, he thought, I’m fucking dead. There was another burst of gunfire. In a panic, McCarty beat the M16 against a large rock on the roadbed and then tried the loading procedure again. This time the magazine locked in place and the rod forwarded the round into the chamber.

  D.J. leapt to his feet and caught a glimpse of movement at the rear of the pickup truck. He lifted the M16 above his head and emptied half of the twenty-round magazine in the direction of the yellow truck, sweeping the weapon back and forth to cover the width of the road with gunfire. It was only when he ducked back down that D.J. realized he had been so afraid of being shot that he had closed his eyes the entire time he was firing.

  It was suddenly silent. McCarty looked over the door, scanning the roadway in front of him. The figures were gone. He took a deep breath and advanced to the rear driver’s side of Evans’s unit. He lifted the gun, sighted in on the back of the yellow truck, and fired, sending rounds into the tailgate, trailer hitch, and through the back window. He saw something lying in the road that he thought might be a body and emptied the remainder of the clip at the object, but it turned out to be nothing more than a rag.

  Jim McPheron moved up from behind the Fairlane to D.J.’s previous position behind the open door and took the shotgun out from the unit, crouching behind the open door.

  McCarty flipped the jungle clip over and this time it locked easily into the magazine port. He knelt beside Evans. Suddenly there was the booming of four shotgun blasts just behind him. McCarty jumped, accidentally discharging a round from the M16. McPheron had decided to lay down some cover for D.J. without telling him.

  Deputy Mike Lenihan advanced to the rear of the Fairlane from his own unit one car back. Along with him was Highway Patrol officer Steve Batchelor. Lenihan motioned to Batchelor and together they darted forward in a crouch to Evans. The two men dragged him back to the driver’s side of the Fairlane, McPheron emptying all six rounds from his .38 as cover. When they were back, McPheron retrieved a first aid box from the trunk of the Fairlane and dressed a bandage over Evans’s grotesquely enlarged eye socket. It was the only thing he could think to do. The men huddled behind the two patrol units with their weapons drawn. “If they still want to kill us,” Lenihan said, motioning with his revolver toward the thick brush on the top of the hill above them, “that’s where they’ll go.” McCarty stood and fired a dozen rounds from the M16 up the hill.

  WATCHING THE ACTIVITY AT THE WASHOUT SITE FROM A BEND IN THE ROAD far below, detective Mike Jordan put out an urgent plea for all RSO personnel to clear the air of all the goddamn radio chatter. E-229, can you copy. We request that you maintain minimum traffic. We have a very hazardous situation on Sierra. We got several officers shot and we don’t know what the status is with all this traffic.

  10-4. All units minimum traffic, even on emergency, Keeter relayed. Reference Sierra Avenue. Keeter’s transmission was calm and measured, but the meaning was not lost on those who heard it: Something had gone terribly wrong in Lytle Creek.

  Hovering above in 40-King-1, John Plasencia and Ed Mabry had watched helplessly as the firefight unfolded on the roadway below. Mabry had momentarily lost sight of the truck behind a row of trees and when he finally reestablished a visual on the suspects, they were already standing in the road. Thirty-six seconds after Jim Evans had asked if the truck was moving, Bender finally came over the radio with the answer from 40-King-1: The vehicle is stopped. They’re on foot. Now Plasencia and Mabry could see something else happening below: The suspects were getting away.

  Chris Harven pushed himself up to his hands and knees and began to crawl up the road. It felt as though someone had stuck a knife in his back. After five yards, he got to his feet and walked to the tumble of gravel, boulders, and tree trunks that had rushed down the mountain and buried Baldy Notch Road. He picked a route and began to climb his way across. Ahead of him, Manny scrambled across, still holding Chris’s Heckler. When he got to the other side of the washout, Delgado just kept walking and never looked back.

  Chris saw his brother crossing the washout just above him, carrying the “Shorty” AR-15. Where’s George? Chris called. Russ paused, looked around, and then motioned downhill. George was below the level of the roadbed, still carrying the .308 and moving slowly, his feet slipping out from under him on the loose shale. I’m done, George called up to them, breathing heavily, his face pale and waxy, pants blood-soaked down to the knee. I’m bleeding out.

  Chris took the Heckler from George and squinted up at the chopper cruising just below the cloud cover, the blades cutting the air with a guttural sound. He looked at the road ahead of them. A hundred yards farther up, it curved around the back of the mountain, the dirt and gravel seeming to disappear into the gray sky. Just get up around that bend and you can go over the side, he said to George. They began to slowly walk up the hill. Russ hoisted the “Shorty” over his shoulder and followed behind them. Ahead, Manny reached the top and disappeared around the bend.

  After another few minutes, Russ, Chris, and George came to the sharp bend that would take them to the other side of the ridge. Russ Harven took one last look at the scene below them, the long line of cars, the blue and red lights flashing against the canyon walls in the falling dusk. I knew this was a fucked-up idea, he said to himself before disappearing around the bend with the others.

  On the other side of the mountain, the road was just as steep as before. George went to the edge and stood looking down the hillside of chaparral. I’m gonna slough off here, he said. He stepped over the edge and slid down a few feet on the loose dirt. Chris handed the Heckler down to him. George took the gun and went down the hillside a few dozen more feet before abruptly tossing the rifle aside and then continuing down.

  Chris and Russ moved on. A few hundred yards up, Chris suddenly veered off and went over the edge. When Russ looked back
, he was just gone. Russ kept going, all alone now. After another bend in the road, he went over the side himself. The loose dirt kicked out from under his boots and he fell back and began to slide and tumble down the hill. He got his feet under him again and kept going. Reaching a group of fallen trees, he found an opening beneath one and shoved the “Shorty” AR underneath it. It was one thing to be holding the cops off from the back of a speeding pickup truck, but there was no way they were going to shoot their way out of a canyon on foot. The only thing a rifle would do now was slow him down.

  A little farther down he came to a stand of fir trees and leaned against a boulder among them to rest. He ran his hand along his head until he came to the bump where the pellet of buckshot was nestled beneath his scalp. An inch lower and I’d be right there with Billy, he thought. He sat and looked out over the canyon, his breath visible in the cold air. Below him, Coldwater Canyon opened up to the North Fork of Lytle Creek. He could see the stretch of Lytle Creek Road they had traveled a short time before. Law enforcement vehicles were still streaming up the road toward Stockton Flats. The San Bernardino sheriff’s helicopter that had been following them made one last pass and then swooped down into the canyon just below the cloud cover and headed back toward the Inland Empire. He watched it go.

  CROUCHED BEHIND THE REAR FENDER OF JIM EVANS’S PATROL CAR, D. J. McCarty heard the last transmission from 40-King-1. Give me a cigarette, he asked Lenihan, even though he rarely smoked. Lenihan shook a pair of Marlboros out of his pack and the two men sat smoking behind the cover of Evans’s unit.

  Lenihan checked McCarty’s wounded elbow. A chunk of flesh the diameter of a golf ball had been torn off. We should get you out of here, he said. McCarty shook his head. There was another radio transmission. An eight-man SWAT team from San Bernardino PD was at Stockton Flats and making its way up the mountain. I’ll leave when they get here, he said, lighting a second cigarette off the first.