Now, in the cool sunrise of a Monday in July, Johnny and two of his best mountain riders had to grimly accept the probability that they had another gory recovery job waiting for them before the day was done.
Maybe it was the sleepless night, maybe his worry about the missing girl, but Johnny found himself staring at the familiar breakfast crowd in Bettie’s as if he’d never been there before. Most of the trout fishermen were Easterners, middle-age men with money. It wasn’t considered polite anymore to say “dudes.” “Out-of-stater” was the currently accepted epithet.’ The deeply tanned outfitters and the quiet, efficient women waiting on tables, of course, were locals. Johnny called everyone by his first name. This morning, he couldn’t help but see the difference between his neighbors and the visiting fishermen.
The people from out of state came here to have fun. For them, Montana was a place of amusement. You could play here. For a few weeks each year, you could become a fisherman, or a cowboy, or a hunter of large animals. When your vacation was over, you could return to the supposedly serious world of corporate policy or malpractice suits.
Johnny stared at Steve and Robin’s thick, calloused fingers and the knotted muscles of their forearms. Guiding a quarter horse up a thickly timbered slope, searching for a wounded—probably dead—girl, was what he considered serious work. Robin, for example, kept a string of pack mules in a barn right in the middle of town. Visitors thought that was colorful, real old-time West. The fact was, however, that Robin used those mules to earn a living, packing supplies for the Forest Service and provisioning hunting camps. Robin Shipman and men like him were workers, not tourist attractions. Despite the four-color brochures from the Montana tourist board, Johnny understood that the Madison Range certainly wasn’t an “all-season vacation paradise.” And when things went wrong, the country required serious people, not vacationers.
For fifteen years as a law enforcement officer, Johnny had cleaned up after visitors’ accidents and arguments and sometimes fatal indiscretions.
Once, he and a group of deputies had been obliged to climb Beehive Mountain with a string of mules to pack down the rotting remains of two hefty doctors whose small plane had failed to clear the summit by one hundred feet. The summer before, he’d been obliged to view the grizzly victim in the morgue. He had lifted dead tourists from the mangled remains of their cars at the bottom of mountain gorges, and he pulled their lifeless bodies from the water in Beartrap Canyon.
People came here for fun, to enjoy a manageable adventure in the recently tamed West. To them, the country was simply a composite of good trout fishing, mountain wilderness to hike, colorful locals, and cheap prices. On the Beartrap, Johnny’s clients—flushed with the exhilaration of the white water—would often say they wished they could “restructure” their lives so that they could live here all year.
Johnny would answer, “Yeah, well, it’s real nice summer country, but the winters here get a little long.”
Behind the counter at Bettie’s there was a small wooden plaque, the kind you could find in a novelty store or a truck stop. On it was a simple message:
New Incentive Plan
Work or Get Fired
Visitors laughed when they saw it, but the local ranchers who came here every morning for coffee and gossip only smiled. To them, the message was perfectly logical. The country demanded at least that much of you. A natural corollary might be:
Be Careful
Or Get Killed
And this morning, as he folded his map and sent his men on their way, Johnny knew they all had some serious, careful work to do.
Johnny downshifted for the last steep hill before the valley. Ennis was spread before him, a cluster of low buildings and dense cottonwoods. He had to stop for a minute at home to grab a pair of wool socks for his hunting boots and another battery charger for the walkie-talkies he’d just picked up from his Virginia City office. He was running late; he’d be up at Big Sky by nine.
The radio burst static, and he automatically hit the squelch button. It was Jay Cosgrove calling; his voice was excited.
“—confirm a double shooting. Repeat, two people shot. Two victims, possibly both fatal.” Jay’s voice slowed and Johnny could hear him take charge of his emotions. “Six-one has called for backup. Understand 25–1 is 10–85 this location—”
The transmission became garbled. Jay was calling from up in the mountains and reception was never good down here in the valley.
Instinctively, Johnny hit the gas pedal and glanced at his watch, almost exactly 8:25. He breathed deeply to overcome the initial adrenaline rush. On TV, the cops didn’t get excited when they heard such reports. So much for TV. Johnny never got used to it. Never.
Jay was transmitting again, but the signal was too chopped up to understand. Johnny waited until the channel was clear and then punched his mike button to call Kim Hudson. Kim had taken over from his wife, Vicki, at seven. He was a good, steady hand in an emergency, and he’d have copied all of Jay’s message.
“Kim,” Johnny called, breaking formal radio procedure, “25–1, repeat the message from 25–8.”
Kim’s voice was overly calm. “Okay, Johnny. Jay confirms a double shooting in the search area. One witness reports the victims are the missing girl, Kari Swenson, and one search team member from Big Sky, name unknown. Copy?”
“Go ahead, Kim, I’m 10–4.”
“Stand by a sec …” The mike clicked dead, and a few moments later Kim was back up. “Okay, I just received some land line traffic on this, too. We’ve got a confirmation on the victims and the suspects. Male searcher definitely fatal gunshot wound, according to the witness, a James … sorry, can’t read the last name. And Kari Swenson, that’s K-a-r-i, by the way, wounded by handgun, possibly fatal.”
“What’s this about suspects?” Johnny interrupted. “Did Jay report this wasn’t an accident?”
“That’s affirmative,” Kim said calmly. “Deliberate shooting. Suspects in incident, two white males dressed in green fatigues. One light-haired, in twenties, one in forties, with gray beard. Confirmed two handguns, maybe one shotgun, maybe more rifles. You 10–4, Johnny?”
Automatically, Johnny grabbed his blue pursuit light bubble and reached out the window to snap the suction cup to the Eagle’s roof. “I’m 10–4. What else is there?”
“I copied a weak transmission from 25–8 to other officers advising them to stay off the ridges and to get the search parties back in from the Ulerys Lake and Beehive Basin area.”
Johnny hit the lights and siren and sped toward Ennis. His initial impulse was to bypass the town and head straight up the Jack Creek logging road to the scene. But, now he slowed, letting the relayed messages work in his mind. This was no longer a missing person search. A bear attack or accidental shooting was not the problem. There were confirmed shooting victims and at least two armed suspects. For years as a deputy, Johnny’s duty would have been to rush to the scene. But now he was the sheriff, not just a deputy. He had to think through the entire tactical situation.
“What else, Kim?”
“Land line from Lone Mountain Ranch. They want a helicopter to search for the victims and evacuate them.”
“Ten-four. Have you contacted Bozeman?”
Kim’s voice was showing some strain now. “Johnny, Sheriff Onstad’s already called in the one available chopper from Central Helicopters over there. It’s 10–85 right now with Gallatin County people on board.”
Johnny frowned, then tried to relax, to let the dimensions of the problem reveal themselves naturally. Big Sky was much more accessible from Bozeman than it was from the Madison Valley. It was normal for John Onstad to be on the scene already, and Johnny could not fault him for taking the initiative in ordering up that chopper. At a time like this, you didn’t worry about the bureaucratic small change of county jurisdictions. But Johnny had no way of knowing for sure if the helicopter John Onstad had commandeered was equipped with a litter to evacuate the wounded girl.
He
was coming up fast on the outskirts of Ennis. Then he remembered the seismograph survey outfit that had set up their trailer office next to Hickey’s Motel in June. They had two choppers, and he knew one could carry a sling litter.
“Kim,” he called, trying to speak slowly and clearly, “we’ve got an emergency. Alert all the deputies and the reserves to stand by for assignments. Contact Merlin and tell him I’m going to get a chopper from that oil survey outfit and proceed up the mountain.” He paused, sorting the details. “Yeah … where’ve they got their command post?”
“On the dirt road near Jay’s house … in the upper village there, below the trailhead.”
“Ten-four, Kim. That’s where I fly in … ETA, depends on how fast I can get a helicopter. You copy all that?”
“Yes, sir. Any special orders for the deputies?”
Suspects in green fatigues, Johnny thought. Possibly those neo-Nazi crazies the FBI had been warning people about. He couldn’t be sure at this stage, but somebody up there was armed to the teeth and shot a girl out jogging, then murdered a cowboy who came searching for her. “Yeah,” Johnny said. “Tell them to get their rifles and ammunition together. Explain that we’ve got armed and dangerous people running around up there.”
The lady behind the counter in the seismograph company looked cool, efficient, and potentially stubborn. Johnny could tell that she wasn’t going to like the idea of a small-town sheriff taking over one of their helicopters. But he sure didn’t have time to fill out any forms and wait for permission.
“Ma’am,” he began, without so much as saying good morning, “I need one of your helicopters immediately. We’ve had a shooting up near Big Sky. One man is dead, and there’s a girl up there wounded real bad.”
The woman paused, as if preparing to cite all the reasons his request was impossible to accept. But then she nodded silently and reached for the microphone of the large radio beside her on the countertop.
The helicopter would meet him at the Sportsman’s Lodge landing strip in twenty minutes. Johnny sped back up Main Street, trying simultaneously to speak clearly into the radio mike over the wail of the siren and to steer clear of tourists. He was calling Bill Hancock, his reserve deputy sergeant and the owner of the Charging Bear Trading Post, a well-stocked gunstore and Western museum.
If Johnny was going up there after armed murderers in green fatigues, he was going to need more firepower than his .45 automatic.
“Twenty-five–R–3,” he called, once he’d made contact with Bill’s patrol car, “meet me at your store, ASAP. I’m gonna need one of those assault rifles of yours and lots of ammo.”
Bill was just coming off night highway duty and had obviously copied all the radio traffic on the situation up at Big Sky. “I’ll be there in five minutes, Johnny.”
As it turned out, both cars slid into the dusty parking lot of the log store at the same time. Bill dashed into the building with Johnny behind him.
Bill chose a Ruger GB Mini 14, a lighter-caliber version of the semi-automatic military rifle. This was the police model, with a collapsible metal stock and a flash suppressor. It was not a hunting rifle with a polished walnut stock. The steel parts were intentionally dull to prevent reflection, the tubes and joints of the stock functional, not graceful. The gun evoked Vietnam or Lebanon, not Field and Stream.
Johnny hefted the rifle, checked the safety and sighted down the barrel. “Okay,” he muttered grimly. “This’ll do. How about ammo?”
Bill was a tall gray-haired man with a quiet, precise manner. Without speaking, he peeled back the Velcro pouches of the rifle’s black carrying case to reveal four magazines, each holding twenty rounds of .223 ball ammunition.
Johnny muttered, “Okay, Bill, thanks.”
“What job have you got for me, Johnny?” There was no question that Bill wanted to be part of the posse that went after the killers, whoever or whatever they were.
Johnny looked at his watch. There were still several things he had to do before he met that chopper pilot at the Sportsman’s Lodge. “Call Kim and tell him you’re standing by for assignment.”
“Good luck,” Bill called, as Johnny dashed for his car.
“Thanks,” Johnny yelled over his shoulder. “You, too.”
Johnny made the twenty-eight-mile round trip from the west side of Ennis to his office in Virginia City and back to his house in under twenty minutes, hitting over a hundred on the few straight stretches. After the last shooting incident Johnny had been involved in, Sue had made him promise to always wear his bulletproof vest, if he had advance warning of potential danger. But this morning, he’d left the vest in his office.
As he roared back into town, he couldn’t help grinning, despite the danger facing them all up in the mountains. A twenty-minute round trip “over the hill” to fetch a piece of safety equipment was like paying four five-dollar bills for a twenty-dollar mule and thinking you’d got a bargain.
Sue must have heard his siren because she was standing on the front porch as he pulled up. He dashed past her to grab his extra map case and his big pistol from his office off the living room.
“What’s going on, Johnny?”
He could see from her face there was no sense trying to play things down. She knew him far too well for that.
“There’s been a shooting up there, Sue.” He threw his binoculars and a box of .44 ammunition into a canvas sack. “I’ve got to run, honey. There’s a chopper waiting for me.”
“Just a second,” she protested, trying to block his way back out the front door. “What shooting, where?”
“Up above Big Sky … the girl, and somebody helping to find her … Sorry, Sue.”
He was down the stairs. The car door was already open, so he threw his bag in, pushed the armored vest off the driver’s seat, and jumped behind the wheel. As he sped down the quiet street, he saw women and kids gaping at him from the shady yards beneath the big old cottonwoods.
He had the weird sensation that he was riding off to war.
The landing strip at Sportsman’s Lodge stretched across an old hay field behind the motel. There was a prefab hangar, a gas pump, a wind sock, and not much else.
Johnny cut his siren and pursuit lights before he turned into the lodge. Word of the shootings would get out soon enough, without him advertising the emergency any more than necessary. The chopper was sitting right in front of the hangar, its big rotor blades spinning slowly at low idle.
Johnny grabbed an armful of gear and scooted beneath the rotor tips to the open door on the right side of the cockpit. Up close, the turbine whine was loud, and he could only gesture to the dark-haired young man sitting in the pilot’s seat. As Johnny returned with the rifle case and his maps, he saw that the pilot had already attached a long sling cable and metal casualty litter to the hoist point on the chopper’s belly. This guy was no rookie.
Bill Hancock had traded hats with Johnny, giving him a brown plastic-mesh baseball cap with Madison County Sheriff’s Department across the front, so that he’d be able to wear earphones in the chopper. As Johnny snapped himself into the seat belt, he was thankful that he had guys like Bill and Jay backing him up today. It was always the same, going into a deal like this … a sagging, lonely kind of feeling down in the gut. Hard to explain to people who’d never felt it, but very familiar to those who had.
Obviously, the pilot belonged to those already initiated to combat. When Johnny had his headset in place and could talk to the young man without shouting, the pilot held up a heavy, long-barreled .357 magnum pistol.
“Hope you don’t mind, Sheriff,” he said, gazing at Johnny through lightly tinted sunglasses.
From his expression and the tone of his voice, it was pretty clear that he intended to pack the gun, even if Johnny objected.
Johnny hit his mike button. “Yeah, well … I’m not really expecting any trouble for you up there.”
“That’s what they always used to say in ’Nam,” the pilot replied. He smiled now, a young man’
s grin beneath much older eyes.
“Okay,” Johnny conceded. “Be my guest.”
The pilot nodded abruptly, reached across Johnny to double-check the door lock, then twisted open the throttle grip. Johnny felt the familiar vibration as the turbine howled. He looked back out the window to verify they were clear of obstacles, then gave a thumbs up.
Beside him in the small cockpit, the pilot eased back the control stick and the improbable machine rose gracefully into the morning sky. Johnny pointed toward the dark forested gap of the Jack Creek drainage and tapped the landing area on the pilot’s open aerial chart.
“Roger that,” the young man called. His expression was alert but not troubled. He seemed happy at the prospect of facing armed men up there.
Johnny could not be certain, but he sensed the young man had flown many times into mountains much more threatening than the dark ridges that now rose before them.
7
Madison Range
July 16, 1984
Jack creek Canyon opened below the helicopter. Johnny caught a glimpse of a blue horse trailer and a sheriff’s vehicle on the road, just past the Hammond Creek Ranger Station. That would be Robin Shipman’s trailer and the patrol car had to be either Jerry Mason or Dick Noorlander. Good; Merlin was getting the troops out to seal off the roads from the mountains.
When Johnny turned to look ahead, he flinched. They were heading straight for a sharp, timbered ridge. The trees seemed to rush down at them, and for a moment his vision spun with vertigo. This kid seemed to have forgotten they were swinging a cable litter beneath the chopper. They cleared the ridge and were climbing again at a hundred knots.
“Sorry about that,” the pilot said, smiling. “I kind of like to fly the contours when there’s a chance of ground fire.”
Johnny nodded and swallowed dryly. He had been a fixed-wing pilot for over fifteen years, but he could never get used to choppers. Flying in a helicopter meant abandoning all the subconscious caution a good airplane pilot acquired with years of experience. Airspeed was sacred in a normal aircraft; in a helicopter it was of little importance. A fixed-wing pilot learned early to strive for altitude and avoid ground obstacles … although Johnny had stretched this rule about as far as possible when he flew his battered little Tailor Craft on the rodeo circuit. Helicopters worked slow and low and at all kinds of crazy altitudes. Stall and crash always seemed imminent when Johnny rode in choppers.
Incident at Big Sky Page 6