Rolling Thunder (John Ceepak Mystery)

by Chris Grabenstein

  Skippy raises the barrel of his shotgun. There’s no need to pump another load into the chamber; the tactical weapon autoloads it for him.

  “Be cool, man. Be cool.”

  Skeeter picks up his cordless microphone and his backpack full of gear.

  “Move it!”

  Cliff walks through the parked train. Skippy cuts across the roller coaster, using the seat behind the one Cliff is crossing so he can move sideways and keep one eye on Cliff, the other on his clump of twenty-some prisoners still sitting on the wooden loading deck.

  They reach the platform on the other side of the tracks. Skippy slings one rifle over his shoulder, prods Cliff with the muzzle of the other.

  “Give me that fucking microphone.”

  Cliff hands Skippy the microphone.

  “Where’s the goddamn wire?”

  “It’s cordless, man. Beams your voice back to the wireless transmitter in my bag, which sends it to W-A-V- Y.”

  “Good. Get into the trailer with the rest of them. Stay away from the windows, my man. Snipers are always looking for assholes stupid enough to stand in front of a window. Think they can disarm me with a well-placed shot. I learned about that one at the police academy. Some jerk in the Midwest actually did it. Better shot than Danny Fucking Boyle.”

  Great. He’s dragging me into his tirade, too.

  Cliff goes into the control room.

  Skippy squints up at the arched ceiling.

  “I’m so glad my daddy put in the roof! Aren’t you guys? You poor SWAT bastards. Up there freezing your nuts off on top of a rickety goddamn roller coaster and you can’t shoot me because my daddy didn’t want people to demand refunds if it started raining after they bought their tickets. He built them a shed so he could steal their money, rain or shine!”

  He faces the crowd on the far side of the tracks.

  Raises his shotgun.

  They scream and squirm backward.

  Skippy laughs. Lowers his weapon.

  “And my father thought I was a wuss! You people are all fucking pansies! Each and every one of you! But guess what? This is your sunny funderful day! As soon as I am safely inside that door, you are all free to go. Now, I’m sure the police will want to ask you a lot of questions. Please tell them that justice will soon be served. And, when it’s time to go, kindly exit the way you entered. No pushing or shoving or I might have to shoot you. Also, try not to trample Mr. Santucci or that brave little asshole whose head I blew open like a watermelon on your way out the door, okay? And, finally, and this is the most important part. On behalf of my entire family, Daddy and Kevin and Peter and Mary and Sean O’Malley, I hope each and every one of you will tell your friends about Sea Haven’s exciting new thrill ride: Big Paddy O’Malley’s heart-stopping new wonder—the Rolling Fucking Thunder!”

  39

  AS SOON AS SKIPPY CLOSES THE DOOR TO THE CONTROL ROOM, his hostages stampede off the platform.

  They’re pushing and shoving at the bottleneck where they have to squeeze through an opening to run down the ramp that takes them back to the room full of stanchions and barriers like they have at airport security so you can wait in line for an hour and keep doubling back on yourself.

  The mob treats the stockades like hurdles to be knocked over in an Olympics trial gone wrong.

  Ceepak and I are running toward the entryway. So is the rest of the SHPD and several of the state police.

  We’ll try to make the evacuation as orderly as possible.

  “Sam!” I shout when I see her.

  “Danny! He has Richard!”

  “I know. Don’t worry. We’ll get him out of there.”

  “How?”

  “We’re working on it.” I grab her by the arm. “Come on. Run. I’ve got you covered.”

  We dash from the roller coaster entrance to the side of the fried-food stand.

  “Okay. You’re clear.” I gesture toward the staircase leading down to the parking lot. “Is your car down there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Go. Call your mother. Let her know you’re okay.” I practically shove her toward the steps.

  “What about you, Danny?”

  “I gotta go back to work.”

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Danny?”

  “Huh?”

  “Thanks.”

  I think she wants to kiss me. Part of me wishes I could kiss her, too. I’m so happy Skippy didn’t randomly decide to blow a hole through her head. Hey, I’ve seen what those tactical shotguns can do. On the range, they let me fire one at an old TV set. Shattered the whole thing. Blew out the front and turned the metal at the back into a spaghetti strainer.

  “I’ll call you later,” I say.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She runs down the staircase to the parking lot. I race back to the Rolling Thunder, reflexively keeping my head down like I expect Skippy to be the one up on the crossbeams sniping at me.

  “We’re clear,” says Ceepak when I meet him in the entryway. “They’re all out.”

  “Except the ones he took with him.”

  “Roger that. We’ll get them next.”

  A quiet ten minutes passes.

  Maybe the longest ten minutes in my life. I’m thinking about how quickly Skippy could kill all his hostages. Boom, boom, boom. The shotgun reloads itself.

  “Ceepak? Boyle?” The chief signals for us to join him.

  “New development?” asks Ceepak.

  “Negotiator’s here. He’s made contact with O’Malley via the radio gear.”

  “Any demands?”

  “Yeah. He wants to talk to Danny.”

  “Okay. Where’s the microphone or whatever?”

  The chief shakes his head. “He wants to talk to you inside. In person.” He gestures toward the Rolling Thunder. “In the control room.”

  Now he leads us around a bank of cold deep-fat fryers to the communications center the tech guys hastily set up in the rear of the food stand. I see a very serious man in a short-sleeve New Jersey State Police shirt holding a yellow legal pad, a set of headphones strapped across his flat top haircut.

  “Do you need food, Skippy?”

  “Nah.” Skippy’s answers are coming out of a pair of portable speakers. “I had a big lunch. Of course, I wouldn’t mind trying one of those, what’d you call ’em, Cliff? The Stromboller Crusters?”

  “We can try to get you one.”

  “Nah. Forget it.”

  “How about water?”

  “Nope. Water makes me pee.”

  “How about your guests?”

  “It’ll make them pee, too, and I’m not about to start handing out hall passes.”

  “How many people are in the control room with you, Skippy?”

  “Eight. Nine if you count Old Man Ceepak, which I don’t because I’m not convinced he’s actually human.”

  I’m trying to listen actively like Ceepak told me to do when I asked him how we were going to get Skippy and everybody else out of this thing alive. He gave me a crash course in hostage negotiations. Never lie. Ask open-ended questions. Remind Skippy who he used to be. Junk like that.

  So when I listen actively, what I hear is a guy who has never had the chance to blow off steam and is now spouting off like a geyser.

  “Send in Danny,” Skippy demands. “He’s the only one I’ll talk to.”

  “We’re attempting to locate Officer Boyle right now.”

  I tap my chest.

  The tall man nods.

  “Is Ceepak there?”

  Ceepak raises a hand.

  The tall man sees it.

  “Yes. Officer Ceepak is here with me in the command post.”

  “Oooh. You’ve got a command post. I must be important.”

  “You are, Skippy.”

  “Well, if Ceepak is there, then Danny Boyle’s there, too. The two of them might be queer for each other, you know what I mean? They’re always
so far up each other’s butts they could be a pair of hemorrhoids.”

  I’m tempted to shake my head, say, “No we’re not.”

  Then I remember: Skippy is a lunatic. I need to just listen, not react.

  “Okay,” says the negotiator. “I see Boyle. Sorry. I’m from up in Rahway. Didn’t recognize him. Where are you from, Skippy?”

  “What is this, Negotiating for Dummies 101? Are you trying to establish rapport with me or something?”

  “I’m just here to help us all get what we want.”

  “Yeah? Well, what the hell do you want, Officer Tom Parkhill from Rahway, New Jersey?”

  “For you, your guests, and us to all get out of this thing the best way possible.”

  “Oh, really, how would that work, Tom?”

  “What do you think would be the best ending, Skippy?”

  “For you to shut the fuck up and send in Danny.”

  “Why do you want Officer Boyle to come join you and the others?”

  “Because he’s my only fucking friend in the whole world, okay? Sorry about that homo crack, Danny. I know you and Ceepak aren’t queers. He’s married, right? Ceepak?”

  I nod. I’m not sure why.

  “Hey, Skippy?”

  “Yeah, Tom?”

  “Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take a minute to talk to Mr. Boyle. You think about what you’re willing to give me if he comes in.”

  “What?”

  “We need to make an exchange.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t need to do anything.”

  “If I send in Officer Boyle.”

  “Then I promise I won’t blow the brains out of this fucking douchebag Richard Balls Sack or whatever his fucked-up name is. That’s my deal. You send Danny in, I don’t send another dead body out the door.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “Sure. And get me that fucking sandwich. That fucking Stromboller Coaster.”

  “Okay, Skippy. I’m sending somebody over to grab you one. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

  “Who the fuck cares?”

  Officer Parkhill presses what I suspect is a mute button on the wire dangling off his mouthpiece.

  “Boyle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your friend is irrational. Lot of pent-up rage.”

  Ceepak’s nodding. He agrees with the diagnosis.

  “Sir?” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s not really my friend.”

  I just had to get it on the record.

  Parkhill, who is even more stoic than Ceepak, cracks a thin smile. “Pretend he is for today, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s already killed two people. We need to make him feel like a human again, a man with connections to reality, or I guarantee he’ll kill every one of those hostages.”

  “We went to school together. We were part-time cops the same summer.”

  “Good. Use that. Let him know somebody remembers the guy he used to be.”

  “Okay.”

  Parkhill picks up what looks like a very cold cup of coffee. Gulps some down. “Here’s our situation: We know nothing about his setup inside that control room. There’s no security camera in there. If you go in, we don’t know what we’re sending you into.”

  “He has three weapons,” says Ceepak. “Two rifles, one sidearm.”

  “He probably has extra ammo,” I say. “The pockets of his cargo pants looked pretty stuffed.”

  “And,” says Ceepak, “he is already wearing a gas mask.”

  “Ruling out tear gas,” says Parkhill.

  The SWAT Commander steps forward. I still don’t know his name but with all his black armor and black helmet and bulging black weaponry he reminds me of Robocop. “However, he has put himself in a very tight box. Literally. The control room is tiny. Maybe two hundred square feet. If Officer Boyle goes in, distracts him for a few minutes, my men can initiate a vertical assault and rappel down to that building from the girders up above, toss flashbooms through the windows, here and here.”

  He points to the side windows of the rectangular trailer on the blueprint of the control room.

  “He’ll see you coming,” says Ceepak.

  “How? My men move quieter than cats on goose down pillows.”

  “Video monitors. Kevin O’Malley told us earlier that all the camera lines feed into that control room. We can’t see him because there are no cameras inside the coaster operations center, but he’s receiving real-time information from cameras covering every inch of the track. You launch a vertical assault, the civilians all die before your men reach the end of their lines.”

  Robocop nods. Guess he hadn’t thought about that.

  “There is one point of entry he may not have covered on his video monitors,” says Ceepak, tapping the train track between the loading platform and the exit platform in front of the control room building. “I could crawl in under here.”

  He points to what looks to be an access panel to the crawl space under the elevated area on the schematics.

  “And come out the other end underneath the train tracks.”

  “Can you fit through the railroad ties?” asks Parkhill.

  “Roger that. Danny and I had the opportunity to walk the track last weekend.”

  Right. When Mrs. O’Malley had her heart attack.

  “The space between ties appeared to be a little less than their width. I’d estimate there is fourteen to sixteen inches of clearance between ties. I have a thirty-inch waist. I should be able to squeeze through, once I remove my Kevlar vest. I’ll carry the flashbooms and my weaponry in a gear bag that I can haul through the tracks after I’m clear.”

  “He’ll see you,” I say. “The cameras have to cover the loading platform.”

  “Correct. But, as you see, the camera is positioned up here in the rafters. The stranded train is here.” He taps the track on the blueprint. “If I come up here.” Now he taps to the front of where the stranded train’s front car would be. “And stay low, the camera won’t see me. I can toss in the flashboom; the blast of light and noise will disorient Skippy long enough for me to make my entrance.”

  “But you won’t know where he is,” I say.

  “No. But you will, Danny.”

  True. I’ll also have a splitting headache and be blind.

  “You can spot me, call out his coordinates. You may also have a chance to grab one of his weapons yourself.”

  I nod. “Yeah. It might could work.”

  “It’s a good plan,” says Robocop. “A little on the Lone Ranger side of things for my taste, but it looks like our best option. I’ll get my best man.”

  “Sir? I already volunteered.”

  “Commendable, Officer Ceepak. But my guys train for this sort of thing every day.”

  “So does Ceepak,” I say. “Besides, he’s my partner. We know how to communicate with each other. I don’t want some total stranger shooting at me when I shout out where the hell Skippy’s hiding.”

  “Son,” Robocop starts in but I raise my hand to let him know he can spare his breath.

  “Look, guys—I’m only going to do this if Ceepak is the one covering my back.”

  40

  CEEPAK STRIPS DOWN TO HIS T-SHIRT AND CARGO PANTS—he needs to be less bulky to squeeze through the ties on the roller coaster track.

  Robocop packs a gym bag for him. In goes Ceepak’s Glock, with an extra mag.

  “We’re putting in two XM84 Stun Grenades,” says the SWAT team leader. “You know their capabilities, correct?”

  “Roger that. They should effectively neutralize and disorient enemy personnel. We tossed a few into insurgent strongholds when I was over in Iraq. Proved quite effective. I’ll, of course, need protective eye gear.”

  “Yeah,” says Robocop, stuffing a pair of goggles into the bag with the bombs. I think the guy finally gets it that Ceepak understands what they call “tactical intervention strategies,” even if he doesn’t wear a helmet to wor
k every day anymore.

  “You ready, son?” Officer Parkhill asks me.

  “Yeah. I’m good to go.”

  I’m actually scared shitless, but Parkhill and the gang of manly men in combat gear don’t need to hear that right now.

  “Okay. I’m gonna contact Skippy. Let him know you’re coming over.”

  My mouth is so dry it feels like I licked the salty bottom of a pretzel bag.

  I just nod.

  Parkhill slips the headphones back on and flips the switch on his microphone.

  I catch Ceepak’s eye. He gives a slow nod, the kind that says, “It’s all good,” even when we both know it isn’t. Time to embrace the suck, as his soldier friends say.

  “Skippy? This is Tom Parkhill. Skippy? You got your ears on? Skippy? This is Officer Parkhill. We’re ready to talk.”

  Great. No answer. Maybe Skippy went home and this was all a horribly bad dream.

  “Hello, Tom.”

  “Hello, Skippy.”

  “Skip. I prefer Skip. Skippy sounds like a baby name.”

  “Okay, Skip. Danny’s good to go out here.”

  “Hiya, Danny!”

  I wave. Don’t ask me why, but I do. A little fuck-you finger wiggle coupled with a sideways eye roll. It cracks some of the tough guys up. Ceepak, too. They don’t laugh out loud or anything. But tension is momentarily eased.

  “He can’t bring a gun,” Skip shouts into his microphone.

  “He won’t.”

  “And no bullet proof vests or anything either.”

  “Now, Skip, Danny’s a professional. You remember what’s it like on the job. He’s got to wear the uniform or he’ll catch flak from his bosses.”

  “No! He could sneak in a Glock or a dagger or something under the body armor. No pants either.”

  Parkhill, probably the most patient, unflappable man on the planet, looks flapped.

  “Come again?” he says.

  “No pants. No shirt. No weapons and no wire. I want him in swimming trunks and flip-flops! Like when we were kids on Oak Beach. Remember that, Danny? Oak Beach? We were the shits back then.”

  I hold up my hands, looking for a little guidance.

  “It’s going to take a few more minutes to find Mr. Boyle a swimsuit.”

  “Steal one from that shop across from the Fried Oreo Shack. There’s nobody minding the store, right? You can take whatever the hell you want. Grab a couple bikinis for your girlfriends.”