Below, crouched in the road with riot gun cocked, like a big-game hunter awaiting a charging rhino, the Lieutenant waited for his foe to emerge from the rain-curtain, a hundred yards away.
Luckily, no farm trucks appeared.
As he hovered, watching the Lieutenant stalk his prey, the pilot wondered what would happen next. Vaguely he sensed something missing, but he couldn’t put his fingers on it. Slowly, he raised a hand to his ear. Then it dawned on him. He didn’t have any earphones on. What with the excitement, the Lieutenant, the car and the chopper to watch simultaneously, he hadn’t been aware up till now that they were off.
“Jesus,” he thought, reaching for them. “This all should have been reported when we started.”
He consoled himself by thinking that, as busy as he had been, he couldn’t really have been expected to pay attention to the radio. But a doubt immediately set in as to whether his superiors would see it that way.
He had an inspiration.
Hanging his earphones back where they had been, he guided the helicopter close behind the officer—making plenty of noise—and set it down. Then he yelled, over the rush of the blades, “Sir, that rain’s getting too close again. We’ll have to move back. Let me ferry you a couple of hundred yards back up the road!”
He watched closely for the reaction. Yes, it penetrated. The Lieutenant jumped in, but didn’t take his eyes off the road.
“Hurry,” the Lieutenant insisted.
As the pilot set the craft in motion once more, he gestured toward the hanging phones.
“Sir, do you think we should call in and tell them what’s up? Maybe they’d send reinforcements.”
The smartly uniformed man had begun to look annoyed, but at the mention of the word “reinforcements” his face cleared.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said.
He managed somehow to continue gripping the gun in one hand, and to get the earphones on with the other. He reached for the microphone and gestured for the set to be turned on. The pilot reached over and set it for the command channel.
“Hello! Hello! This is Lieutenant Preen,” Preen shouted. “We need reinforcements. They’re liable to come back out of the rain any minute. Hello! Hello! Do you hear me?”
At the Post Seven radio room, Sergeant Catlin had just been wondering whether to suggest to Superintendent Franklin that the Civil Air Patrol be notified of the missing helicopter, then had decided against saying anything. It would be just a little beyond the scope of his job to make the suggestion.
As the Lieutenant’s voice came in over the radio, Sergeant Catlin looked questioningly up at the Superintendent. The other man nodded, and the Sergeant said into the mike, “Lieutenant Preen? This is Post Seven, Sergeant Catlin. We thought you were down somewhere.” He looked at his watch. “You are almost forty-five minutes overdue. Are you in trouble?”
The agitated voice came in again. “Sergeant, send some men, send some cars. We chased them inside this rainstorm and they’re going to come out again. We need help, we—”
His thin voice was brusquely interrupted by the heavier one of Captain Prescott at headquarters. The voice had a nasty ring to it, the sound of a man who is mad at somebody, who has something to get off his chest.
“Lieutenant Preen, this is Captain Prescott. Now stop that damn chattering and answer my questions.”
Catlin could sense a sudden change in the atmosphere. This kind of talk wasn’t used over the air.
The deep voice continued. “Where are you?”
There was a sound like a mike being covered, and a muffled conversation.
“About twenty miles south of Post Seven.” There was fear in the answering voice.
The grilling went on. “About twenty miles south of Post Seven. About! What do you mean, about? Don’t you know? Are you down?”
“No, we’re in the air.”
“Then why didn’t you call in?” The voice took on a sharper edge. “Don’t you know we were about to notify the Civil Air Patrol to make a search for you?”
Catlin felt sure this was an exaggeration, but said nothing. He glanced across the room. The radio operator sat silent at the teletype, pretending to be reading, but actually listening. Catlin noticed that the teletype itself was strangely silent. Probably every communications man in the state was listening to this.
Franklin, a glint in his eye, and jaw set, got up and walked over toward the transmitting console.
“Why didn’t you call in? Was your radio out?” The Captain’s voice continued. The tone had become deceptively soft.
There was just a slight pause as if Preen were going to grasp at the bait, but he apparently saw the trap.
“No, sir, the radio wasn’t out.”
“Well, then?” Softer yet.
“Well, you see, we were chasing this car, and—”
“Chasing—a—car—with—your—helicopter? You know, here at headquarters we thought you were making an inspection at Post Seven at eleven A.M. Why are you chasing cars?”
The reply was faint, almost pleading, all in one breath. “We were almost to Post Seven when we heard their alarm on the supermarket robbery and the description. Then we saw this blue and white car sideways in the road and when we went down to look, they left as fast as the car would go and we chased them.”
At the mention of the “blue and white car,” the Sergeant’s head went up. This could be something real.
The Superintendent reached over to take the mike from the Sergeant and said, “This is Superintendent Franklin. Lieutenant, tell your pilot to figure your position as nearly as he can. Don’t wait for him to do it; get back to the mike.”
“Yes, sir,” was the reply.
There was a short pause, then the slight pop of the switch as the mike button was pushed again. Without waiting for the Lieutenant to speak, the Superintendent continued rapidly: “Did you say you pursued a blue and white car with two men in it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have it in sight now?”
“No, sir. They drove into a rainstorm, and we had to stop.”
“Are you at the point now where they entered the storm?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“Uh, about five minutes.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, give me your pilot.”
After a bare moment’s pause, Franklin’s voice, tense but controlled, went on: “Is this the pilot?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where are you?”
“A half mile east, and either four or five miles north of Bucola. I’m not sure which.”
“Fine! Now stay where you are, keep your receiver open, but don’t transmit.”
Franklin covered the mike with his hand and turned to the Sergeant, saying, “Call off your sweep on Highway 45, south, and Highway 10, east. Have those four cars converge on the helicopter. While you are dispatching them, have your radio operator contact the Weather Bureau—or the Air Force, if necessary—to get a radar fix on that storm. Find out how big it is and approximately where it lies. We may be able to surround it. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Catlin. He pointed his finger at the radio operator, who nodded his head in silent agreement and turned to the telephone.
Franklin turned the set back to the Sergeant, making a mental note to have a conference with Captain Prescott in the morning.
Catlin switched his set to the communications channel. “All units,” he said, “this is Post Seven. We have a possible sighting of suspects near Bucola. Cars Two, Nine, Twenty and Five, discontinue your sweep. Converge on the intersection of the two section-line roads five miles straight north of Bucola. Car Five, where are you now?”
The answer was immediate. “About a mile south of Bucola.”
“Did you read the dispatch?”
“Yes, I’m turning around now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Call in a
s soon as you spot a helicopter or the search area.”
“Right!”
“Cars Two, Nine and Twenty, acknowledge.”
Amid some static developing from the slowly drifting storm, they replied.
“Okay,” said the Sergeant. “All other units continue your sweep search. Do not acknowledge.”
He flicked the switch, then turned to the radio man, who was still on the phone, calling the Air Force.
24
The blue and white Olds, at ninety, drew a long plume of dust behind it. Ninety was all it would do. The overheated engine was running rough. As they approached Bucola, Rayder slowed somewhat and glanced at his partner.
“How’re those hands? You gonna be able to drive?”
“I think so.” The other had managed to tear some strips from the discarded uniform which he had made into crude bandages. “It’s better if I drive,” he said simply.
“Yeah, I know, but don’t do it unless you’re gonna be able to stick with it all the way. We may not get a chance to change.”
“I’ll stick,” the dark man said quietly.
“Everything set?”
They were almost to the town. Grozzo looked hurriedly around the back seat.
“Okay,” he said.
“Give the hardware a quick wipe,” Rayder said.
“Yeah,” replied the other, vaulting into the back seat with a piece of the torn uniform. He quickly wiped all the exposed metal surfaces. Sliding back into the front, he repeated the process, then paused. “Say,” he said, “how about underneath?”
“Nah, nobody’ll think of looking there. Besides, there’s too much loose dirt on the parts down there for ’em to carry prints.”
They were by now going slowly down the main street, just as they had earlier in the morning. The town was drowsing in the summer heat. Only a few cars, and fewer pedestrians, were about. In between the times when cars went by, it was so quiet that the automatic timer on the town’s lone traffic light at the highway intersection could be heard clicking.
Rayder turned in and pulled up next to the green car, which sat as it had been left, undisturbed, in the lot a half block from the intersecting north-south highway.
Deliberately, trying to seem unhurried, but desperately anxious to rush, they started the transfer. Rayder walked over to the green car and opened the trunk, then walked back for the money bag. Grozzo, working gingerly with his damaged hands, reached into the Olds to get the heavy radio, and the tatters of the uniform.
Just as each had got his burden clear of the car, they heard the sudden sound of a car approaching the town at extremely high speed. Almost simultaneously came the high-pitched squall of tires, protracted as the driver fought to brake off his excess speed for the turn. Then, mingling at first with the tire squall, but rapidly mounting to a scream, came a police siren.
It happened before they could have taken a half-dozen steps. Neither moved. They froze as the high-powered cruiser came into the turn, still at speed, and in a partial skid, came around in an expertly executed racing drift.
They watched with frozen hearts as the trooper’s glance flicked over them for the barest instant, then flicked back to the road to the east as he accelerated heavily through the little town, siren screaming.
Their poise completely routed, the two men dumped their gear into the green car, then, with Grozzo at the wheel, backed violently into the street which the trooper had traversed. With a great screech of tires, ignoring the stop light in their near panic, they crossed the highway and headed in the opposite direction from that taken by the trooper.
Several people who had been aroused by the police car watched them go, including a small boy whose bicycle they had very nearly backed over.
As they cleared the town, Grozzo floored the accelerator, and the large V-8 special, finely tuned, lurched against its mounts as it delivered a flood of power to the rear wheels. The speedometer spun past the 100 marker, and continued climbing rapidly.
Rayder, as usual, recovered his wits first. Tapping his partner on the shoulder, he said, “Better back it off to about seventy. We’ll call attention to ourselves going too fast.”
Reluctantly, Grozzo eased the throttle.
Rayder leaped into the back and picked the radio from the floor where they had unceremoniously dumped it.
“I’m going to try to see what that cop was up to—if he’s transmitting. Maybe he was after somebody else,” he said half-heartedly.
He extended the fishpole antenna and set the receiver at the State Police communications wave-length.
25
The radio operator turned from his phone to face the Sergeant and Franklin. “The Air Force says their radar shows the storm has two cells. The first one is about five miles across—east and west—and ten miles long. It’s slowly moving west, and its center is about five miles to the northeast of Bucola. The second one is bigger, about fifteen by fifteen miles. It’s directly south of the first one.”
Franklin pondered for just a minute, then beckoned the regular radio operator. “Switch this equipment to the communications channel so the patrol cars can get the benefit of this directly,” he said. The man complied, and the Superintendent picked up the mike.
“Lieutenant Preen,” he said.
In a second there was a reply. “Yes, sir.”
Again just a slight pause. Then the Superintendent said, “Um, better let me talk to your pilot.”
The pilot came on. “Yes, sir.”
“Any sign of anything?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you still at the same place where you saw the car go into the storm?”
“Almost, I think it was back toward the east a few hundred yards from here.”
The Superintendent’s inflection became sharper. “Did you say think? Didn’t you see the car?”
“Well, not exactly. You see, when we first chased the car, it drove into the storm and stayed a few minutes, then came back out again. We chased it again, straight south for a couple of miles, then it turned back east toward the storm again, but they were about a half-mile ahead of us. When they turned east, we couldn’t see the car on account of the tall corn. By the time we got up to the road, we couldn’t see them, so we just figured they’d gone back into the storm.” His voice weakened. “We didn’t see anywhere else for them to go.”
The sharp voice said, “Did you look?”
“No, well, I guess we just figured they had gone back in, since we didn’t see anything of them.”
“You’re still in the same area, aren’t you? Suppose you have a look now.”
“Yes, sir,” the weak voice said. Then, after a pause, he added, “Well, there’s a grove of trees down here almost under us now, and—” The voice got weaker.
“And what?”
“And it looks like some tracks, by a tractor or something, leading into it from the road. The corn’s mashed down.”
“Tractor or something!” The voice was sarcastic now. The usually mild-mannered man had lost his temper. “It looks like you two got sucked in. Okay, get some altitude in that thing and see what you can see. Tractor!”
The Superintendent realized it was bad for discipline and morale for him to lose his temper in public, but he hated this incompetence and shoddy work. As he sat struggling to regain his composure, the voice came back on. “Sir?”
“Yes!”
“Sir, we’re almost out of gas. Can I have permission to go on to Post Seven?”
The Superintendent fought down a terrible urge to say, “No, by God, stay there till you fall.” He still hadn’t gotten himself cooled off. With an effort, he said, “Yes, come on in to refuel.”
To the practiced ears of those listening, it was obvious that the Superintendent still had his finger on the mike button; the faint sound of the open mike persisted for almost a minute. It was becoming obvious that he didn’t know what to do next. Finally, without saying anything, he let go the button. The mike noise stopped. No one else spoke
; the air was dead for a minute, then another mike opened up.
It was immediately apparent to Catlin that it was one of his cars, because the transmitter carried part of the sound of the engine, turning at high speed.
“Post Seven, this is Car Five.”
The trooper’s voice sounded a little hesitant. He had undoubtedly overheard the conversation, and now felt himself to be in an awkward situation, like a little boy accidentally happening onto an adult quarrel. The Sergeant immediately sensed that the man must have something to report, or he would presumably have remained quiet. He reached for the mike and said, “This is Post Seven, go ahead,” keeping his voice to a matter-of-fact one.
“Uh, I came a mile east and I’m almost five miles north of Bucola now, at the dispatch point. Uh, shall I remain here?”
Catlin, pursuing his hunch that the man had called in for more than this, but was hesitating for some reason, said, “For the time being. Have you seen anything that might be worthwhile?”
The trooper said “Uh” again, hesitated a moment, then decided to plunge. “When I came through Bucola just now I caught a glance at a blue and white Olds, about a ’58. Two men looked like they were unloading it. They both had things in their hands. I don’t know what. I just got a quick look.”
The Sergeant opened his mouth to speak, but the Superintendent cut him off.
“Get back there fast and see if that car’s still there. Report in on it. Check around town and see if anybody has anything to say.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sergeant Catlin!” Franklin turned to the other man. “Where is the car that was paired with the one we just talked to?”
“I had to pull him in across the territory; they didn’t connect,” was the reply. “Let me call him,” he continued. “Car Twenty, acknowledge.”
“Car Twenty.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m just clearing town, now, south. Got caught in traffic.”
“Did you hear these last transmissions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, proceed to Bucola and help Car Five. Hit it!”
Pursuit Page 6