Relief made Nathan smile. “A very good idea. And I know just the guy to help make that happen fast. Henry.”
“Yes. That’s perfect. Henry and your dad—folks will see them as the town’s elder statesmen and it will mean something coming from them.”
“Spread the word about a community meeting at the top of the hour. By the time you get that message out, Henry will have food and drinks arriving, both here and at the community center.”
Nathan walked with Adam back to the union gathering, and then he headed back to the police staging point, on the phone to his grandfather as he walked.
40
Once Nathan was satisfied the Brentwood officers were paired into assignments with his officers and that Chet and Sillman were on top of the crowd management plan, he rejoined Will. “Are we ready to go on the warrants?”
Will nodded to the officers with him. “Yes. These are the guys.”
“How many people are inside the plant?”
“Counting security guards, thirty-eight total. How do you want to handle this?”
“Let’s move people out of the office area and out of the warehouse area and assemble everyone in the cafeteria. The people inside the plant that are of the most concern to us are not the strikebreakers, but those who normally work here—people in management, the security guards, and there was one union guy that crossed, Isaac Keif. Let’s make sure we quickly account for every one of those people. The last thing we need is someone inside destroying evidence on us.”
Will looked around at the assembled officers. “Noland, you and Tom take the warehouse area. Ben and Dan, you’ve got the offices. Jim, round up the security guards and bring them inside. There are enough cops on the fence perimeter to handle that outside security. I want thirty-eight people in the cafeteria five minutes after we cross through that gate. I don’t expect trouble, but I want you to all go in prepared for it. Assignments clear?”
At the nods around the group, Nathan stepped away and headed toward the locked plant gate. He could feel the union focus on his back as they tried to decide if he was arranging to bring that idling bus through with strikebreakers aboard. He felt like a target. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
The security guard opened the gate for him. Nathan cleared his five officers in and followed Will toward the plant.
* * *
“This is crazy, Nathan. Search warrants?”
“Just read them and stand aside, Logan. They were signed by the judge this afternoon.” The temporary plant manager was more than just flustered and Nathan didn’t want to deal with him. Even under the best of circumstances he had a hard time getting along with the guy.
“But what are you looking for? This doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly what it says. Inventory records and warehouse materials.”
Will came to rejoin them. Nathan was grateful for a chance to step away from the conversation he didn’t want to have.
“We’ve got people assembled in the cafeteria. Everyone is accounted for on my list except for the union guy, Isaac Keif.”
“Did he cross the line this morning?”
“The warehouse supervisor says yes. But there’s a good chance Isaac just walked out as word spread the contract was rejected and the plant was closing. No one remembers seeing him in the last hour.”
“Adam may know if he just left the plant. Let me check with him before we focus in on Isaac as our plant employee of interest. He works in the warehouse, but I would have put him low on my list of names to wonder about.”
“Tom is stationed at the cafeteria door. I’ve got Noland focusing on the office paperwork and the others working the warehouse. Twenty minutes, Nathan. They keep the warehouse shipments housed in sequential lot order. We’ll know quickly if our lot numbers are from a recent shipment.”
“Good. I’ll have an answer on Isaac by then. Are you okay in here if I step out?”
“Yes. I’ll just escort Logan to the cafeteria now, then go back to supervising.”
Nathan shared a private smile with Will and then headed back out of the building to find Adam.
Isaac might have crossed the strike line, but he wasn’t going to stay inside the plant after he heard the news the plant was closing. And he wouldn’t be on the strike line now near union folks he had betrayed. But maybe Adam could find out if someone had seen him leave the plant. If not, Nathan would send an officer he couldn’t spare to check Isaac’s apartment and see if he had returned there. It wasn’t the first name he thought he’d have to track down before the day was over. He just hoped there weren’t too many false trails to follow before he found the one he was hunting to find.
* * *
Bruce and Rae were helping his grandfather. Nathan spotted them down the street on the far side, passing out what looked like soda cans to folks. A makeshift tent, blue canopy fluttering in the mild breeze, was now open in the center of the street, and he was seeing the first signs of people carrying plates with them. The first of the food was beginning to flow.
He spotted Adam and changed course to meet up with him. “Adam, I’m looking for Isaac Keif. Do you have any ideas where he might be?”
“He wouldn’t be staying around this crowd, not after having crossed the line.”
“Did he leave the plant earlier today? That’s what I’m most interested in knowing.”
“Larry—ask around, see if anyone saw Isaac leave the plant grounds as word spread the plant was closing.”
“I’ll check. But he must have, Nathan. I didn’t see his car down at the lot and it was there this morning. I worried about it enough I wanted to make sure he didn’t come back to find himself missing four tires or something else rash on the part of the other union guys.”
“Good to know. I just need confirmation that someone saw him leave the plant.”
Larry nodded and began to make his way through the clusters of people to see who had useful information.
“Have you found anything concerning you inside the plant?” Adam asked quietly.
Nathan shook his head. “We’re just beginning the search. But if we do find something and need to locate any more suspicious material remaining in the plant, how much are we looking at having to open and inspect to answer that question?”
“They aren’t going to leave the one can they are trying to hide sitting out as the top can in the pallet. You’ll spend most of the time with a forklift moving items around to reach what you want to inspect. It would take half a dozen guys a week to do the job if you wanted to open and look at everything.”
“That’s what I feared.”
A rifle retort cracked. Nathan flinched. Concrete slapped beside them.
“Get down!” He pushed Adam to the ground and shoved him toward the protection of a nearby car.
A second shot slammed into the concrete beside them, sending up a puff of white powder and stinging bits of broken concrete.
People screamed. Scattered. Some tried to drop and crawl for cover.
Two more shots in a rapid beat slammed into the squad car down from him and popped window glass like it was a piece of ice.
“Inside! The shots are coming from inside the plant.”
Nathan jerked around at the shouted words and saw an officer waving frantically and pointed to the southwest corner of the plant building.
“The first two weren’t from inside the plant! Those were incoming from north of here,” he yelled back. Should he force Adam to move? Which side gave better cover for this?
Another shot slapped into the concrete and that one Nathan tracked. “That originated inside the plant! Two shooters. We’ve definitely got two shooters!”
He scrambled to push Adam back toward safer protection. “Clear this street, however you have to do it. Move!”
There were civilians all over the line of fire.
Nathan ran toward the first exposed group, as officers along the street realized the danger and began to rise and scramble toward those near them.
The man beside her was already rising and grabbing her hand. They paired up and were moving. Nathan pulled a child past them into his grasp and handed her off to another officer to carry.
People on the street began to rise and run toward safer hiding places. Nathan kept waiting for the first civilian to fall with blood on them. As he ran he counted numbers and knew they were going to lose someone. They had a good sixty people exposed to the shooting angles.
The bus within the tile plant began to move.
Nathan realized what was happening a moment before the bus began to roll toward the gate and he darted for the swinging gate now unlocked to throw it open before the bus had to ram it to get through. Metal scraped paint as the bus cornered and struck the post.
Bruce was driving the bus.
Nathan didn’t ask how he’d gotten inside the plant or if he knew how to even drive something this size. He ran for the first group of people to his right. “Use the bus for cover! Get behind it and clear the street.”
He felt a ray of hope that they would get this done. A shot picked up his left arm at the elbow and slammed it forward into the side of a van.
41
“Stay still. The bus is covering us.”
Sillman had something in his mouth muffling his order and Nathan realized it was the tie Sillman wore but liked to complain about. “Stay with me, Sheriff. That’s an order.” Sillman wrenched the fabric tight as a tourniquet. Nathan refused to scream, but it came close.
“Will. Answer me!” Sillman ordered over the radio.
“We don’t have him. We’re sweeping the place, but we don’t have him.”
“Nathan’s down.”
“Bad?”
“Bad enough. The bullet went through his arm, and the elbow is at best dislocated. Any ideas on the rifle?”
“Has to be a team. One inside, one outside. Chet’s going to silence that rifle one way or another.”
“Get me up,” Nathan found the breath to order. “Get me on that bus. They need you running this, not handling me now.”
“You sure?”
“You’ve got to get manpower in there sufficient to sweep that tile plant. Find the inside shooter, and he’ll tell you who the outside shooter is.”
Sillman nodded. “We’ll get it done. On three, Boss. This is going to hurt something awful.”
“A fitting end for this day. Who else is bleeding now?”
“They just started with the sheriff.”
“It’s nice to be popular. On three.” Nathan tried to position his good hand to help.
Sillman counted it down and then ignored the cry of hurt and got Nathan standing.
Walking those steps into the bus wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped. Ten seconds later Bruce had hold of his belt and Sillman had his back and he was being lifted aboard.
Rae was driving now, but from a seat on the floor, her head barely visible over the dash when she raised up to see where she was going.
Nathan hung on to the pole behind the driver’s seat and collapsed his body into the closest seats.
“Idle it,” Sillman ordered Rae. “Let me get officers moved up, then slow roll back into the plant and take us right to the door. We’re flushing that shooter inside the plant; at the same time we’re covering strikebreakers to get them out of there and onto this bus. Good?”
“Good,” Rae guaranteed.
Nathan watched her strain to see around Bruce and see how badly he was hurt. “I’ll be fine. All this fussing,” he whispered.
Bruce just pushed him lower than the windows and grabbed his watch to time the tourniquet. It had to loosen every minute so blood flow to his hand would survive this even as they tried to stop him from bleeding out.
“The shot went straight through the back of my arm and tossed it forward. It’s dislocated, not shattered,” he repeated with grim certainty what he hoped, not willing to look and know it was worse than that.
“The doctors will tell us that soon.”
Nathan fought the reality he was going to throw up. The pain wasn’t in this stratosphere for being controllable. “We have to get more help to Chet, trying to find that shooter with the rifle.”
“You’ve got good men working the problems. Let them work,” Bruce replied. He leaned over and changed the pressure of the tie.
Nathan shivered with his coat now partly off and the bus even idling not able to keep it more than about mid-fifties in here.
“Go,” Sillman ordered through the open bus door.
The bus lurched forward. “Sorry!” Rae shifted her foot on the gas pedal and the bus began to roll more smoothly.
“The street sign—” Bruce warned. She rolled the bus over it. “Never mind.”
She flinched as a bullet struck a back window and the bus scraped the fence gate on the driver’s side.
Sillman managed to step up into the rolling bus, crouching on the floor below the window line. “Good. Good. Stay right; put it right into that brick entry.”
The officers using the bus for cover slapped the side.
“Stop it now.”
Rae shoved on the brake and threw the gears into park.
“Three teams, sweep this building! Stay on the radios and call it out. I’ve got the center hall and stairs,” Sillman ordered.
Will was ready and waiting. They surged people on the bus, cops pushing men across the six feet from the plant door and onto the bus stairs. “Stay low. Get to the back.”
Will stepped aboard after his last officers. “That’s thirty-eight less Isaac Keif. Back it out of here.”
Gunshots erupted inside the plant. Rae threw the bus in reverse and drove without caring about what she hit on the way back out.
* * *
“Right there, Rae. Good. Pull the keys.” Bruce swung himself off the bus as it came to a stop. Nathan forced himself up to his feet, determined to join him. Will grabbed his good side. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“None of this is.”
Will grimly smiled at that terse reply but half carried him down the steps of the bus.
Adam ran to join them. “We’re running headcounts via shouts between houses and cell-phone calls. I can put my hands on all my men except Isaac Keif. Management is down to searching for four names besides the guys on the bus.”
Nathan got his good hand on his radio and fought to focus. Five minutes, Jesus, that’s all I need. Five minutes of focus; please. My guys need me. He sucked in a breath and depressed the button. “Chet? What are you finding?”
“Our rifleman is rapidly losing places to hide. Flush the one inside; we’ll corner this one.”
“Sillman?”
“Good to hear your voice. We’ve exchanged gunfire with this guy twice; he’s getting pushed toward the back side of the plant. Five shots at us didn’t hit anyone, but I don’t think we got lucky enough to hit him either. ”
The county bomb squad van rolled past them, one of their officers with the driver directing him. It would be enough armor protection for the cops searching the plant to get safely back out if necessary.
“Don’t take chances. There’s more help moving up to join you, and safe transportation out of there is coming in now.” Nathan watched the van enter the plant grounds and stop by the same door they had used.
“I hear you,” Sillman agreed. “We’ll get this guy.”
Nathan nodded and looked at his deputy chief. “Will, we need to get the people on this bus to the courthouse, where we can keep them together under the safety of security and get the interviews of what happened in the plant. But I need this bus staying here to help us shield folks. Find us other transportation?”
Will nodded and called in to the dispatcher.
Nathan struggled to sort out next steps after pinning the shooters. Isaac Keif, that was one of the missing. He looked to the union chief. “Adam, you said four were unaccounted for on the management side. Do you have those names?”
A piercing alarm from the plant shattered the afternoon. The circling sound vibrated the bus windows as it passed over.
“Fire! We’ve got fire in the plant.”
Nathan managed three steps toward the front of the bus, leaning his good hand against it for balance, to see for himself. White smoke circled up into the air above the south side of the plant. Even as he watched, it thickened and began to puff up in small mushroom bursts. The warehouse area was burning.
“Whatever evidence is in there, it’s going up in smoke,” Will said quietly beside him. “Which is exactly what they wanted with all this shooting. Time to destroy the evidence.”
Nathan watched the rising smoke and felt personally numb. “We were close, Will. We were ever so close to having the proof.”
“One inside the plant and one outside. Two names, and we still have them. Destroying evidence doesn’t end this.”
The fire chief scrambled forward, running low along the line of cars to reach them.
“If we can get those shooters stopped, can you contain the fire?” Nathan asked urgently.
“Automatic building fire suppression is going to dump and smother in the next minute; that’s the warning alarm sounding now. If it doesn’t do the job—there are too many chemical vats in there for us to stop the explosions once they start. Ten minutes, Nathan. We’ll know if we’re going to lose the entire plant or not in about ten minutes.”
Sillman appeared near the bomb squad van, not bothering to try and be heard on the radio over this piercing alarm. He signaled hands down. They didn’t have the shooter. He started slapping shoulders, counting men, as he pulled his guys out.
“Hurry, buddy,” Nathan whispered, watching them.
He looked at Will. “Assume the worst and we’re going to lose it; how many blocks have to evacuate with a fire?”
Before I Wake Page 32