The Big Thaw

by Donald Harstad

  “There she goes!” hollered Olinger. “Damn it, they’ve sunk her for sure now!”

  True enough, the General Beauregard began to settle noticeably, and by the stern.

  “Get those fuckin’ yard engines moving!” hollered Lamar. “Now, now!”

  As the Beau started for the bottom stern-first, the yard diesels began to slowly take up the slack on the cable. Too fast, and they’d tear the towing rig right off the bow. Too slow, now, and they’d lose some 650 people to the icy water.

  “Fast as they can,” muttered Lamar.

  The DNR iceboat accelerated rapidly, and came flying onto the concrete ramp at about 30 mph, lofting and skidding up the concrete slab for about 100 feet, before coming to rest behind a tin shed. The sense of relief was enormous, if fleeting.

  As the Beauregard took on more and more water, her weight increased. As she settled deeper and deeper, the drag on the hull also increased. I was beginning to wonder if the yard engines were gong to be able to pull her in at all. So was Captain Olinger.

  “It’s gonna be goddamned close,” he said.

  As we watched, she began to glide toward us, but it was pretty obvious that she was going to be down a good amount before she got anywhere near the shore.

  The hatchway doors along the lower deck began to open up, and passengers began to stream out toward the upper decks.

  Suddenly, there was a belch of smoke from the two yard engines, and they began to move rapidly up the railroad tracks, being very careful not to gain speed too quickly. A few moments later, and the Beau had developed a noticeable movement. She was coming in.

  She was also going down. The main deck was nearly awash for its full length, and the increasing angle at the stern had caused water to lap onto the rear portion of the second deck. It was going to be awfully close.

  “If she strikes the bottom with her stern,” said Captain Olinger, as much to himself as anyone, “I don’t think the yard engines will be able to overcome the drag…” He looked at Lamar and said, “If that happens, we’ll lose her.”

  The gunfire from the Beauregard seemed to have stopped completely, and many firemen were converging toward the area where it looked like she’d beach, if she was lucky.

  “Do we have any fire trucks with really long extension ladders?” asked Adams. “She’s pretty close now …”

  “Nope,” I answered. The tallest occupied structure in Nation County was three stories tall. Hook and ladder trucks weren’t available.

  Suddenly, the Beauregard seemed to lurch, and swayed over to her left, before righting herself. I could see some ten or fifteen passengers lose their footing, and slip and slide into the water.

  “Fuck!” Lamar yelled at Sally to get the rescue crews into the water with whatever boats they had available.

  “Struck the bottom,” said Olinger, “but she bounced a bit.”

  The bow of the Beauregard was about 25 feet from the ramp, and the emergency personnel were beginning to prepare plank, netting, and a short section of floating dock that they’d detached from a long, beached dock about 50 yards from the water. The Beau was also way down at the stern, with water beginning to lap around the glazing at the rear of the third deck.

  Suddenly, both the General Beauregard and the yard engines stopped, with the tension causing the bow cable to sing.

  “Back the engines down!” hollered Lamar, into his walkie-talkie. “She’s stuck … stop …”

  Before he could finish, the cable snapped clear of the bow ring on the Beau, whipping and snaking through the air, flashing toward the yard engines. It struck one of the fire trucks near the ramp, rocking it, and throwing an extension ladder into the air.

  Then, stillness.

  The General Beauregard was stopped about ten feet from the end of the concrete boat ramp. We’d won.

  Twenty-nine

  Sunday, January 18, 1998, 1647

  Let’s go,” said Hester, as she and Art grabbed a stack of papers.

  “What are those?” I asked, heading for the door right behind them.

  “Xerox photos of Gabriel, to hand out to the troops. We don’t want Gabe to slip by us, they gotta know what he looks like,” said Hester.

  I figured Volont wouldn’t be too pleased. What the hell.

  We ran all the way from the pavilion to the dock area.

  Fire, rescue, and boat security personnel were busy preparing the portable ramps to carry the passengers to the dockside, and most of our officers were getting ready for a fight in case the suspects were crazy enough to resist. I was still very worried about that. Smart money would just surrender. But, then, smart money wouldn’t necessarily have tried to rob the damned boat in the first place.

  As the passengers were being very professionally handled by the boat staff and the rescue people, cops were everywhere, armed with their photocopies of Gabriel, and trying to scan every person who left the Beauregard. Just as Shamrock had reported, our suspects, who had originally been in coveralls, had removed them and their ski masks as soon as the one who ventured out on deck had been shot. They were mingling with the crowd, and it was pretty impossible to identify them in the rush, but at least twice we were aided by irate and frightened passengers who helpfully pointed out suspects. Nice work. They’d be reexamined in the holding areas.

  We also had a woman blackjack dealer point one of the robbers out to us. It was kind of funny, really. She just grabbed his nylon windbreaker, and wouldn’t let go. All the way down the ramp.

  “Here’s one! I’ve got one here!”

  He was afraid to hit her with all the cops about. We scarfed him up and got her into a secure area for a statement.

  Still no Gabriel.

  I did see Nancy and Shamrock come down a ramp on the other side of the bow from me. They looked all right, but Nancy seemed to be a little wet. I waved. She glared back, and then grinned. One of the additional DCI agents, who’d arrived within the last couple of hours, came running over. He talked to Art and Hester for a second, and then they gave us the news.

  The same kid who’d surrendered the stretch van had started to talk. We’d cleared an auditorium in the pavilion, and some DCI and FBI agents were doing the post-arrest interviews there. One of the questions the prisoners were all asked was “And when was the last time you saw Gabriel.” They couldn’t incriminate themselves no matter what the answer, because they’d all come directly out of the van. They were, as we say, caught in the act. Gabriel’s last appearance in itself didn’t affect their individual fates at all. Armed robbery was armed robbery. Or, as Sally would have said, piracy was piracy.

  Anyway, when he was asked, he said, “Yesterday.” The next question was directed at Gabriel’s current whereabouts. The answer? “At the bank.” So much for name, rank, and serial number.

  Hester and Art went to the auditorium, and did the questions. She came out after about two minutes, at pretty close to a dead run. When she got across the street to where I had just been joined by George and Volont, she said, breathing hard, “He says that Gabriel wasn’t on the boat. He says Gabriel is at the bank.”

  The other agent had said that the surviving suspects from the bank had said that Gabriel was on the boat. At first, they’d just thought that the two groups had their stories co-coordinated to confuse the cops. It looked to Hester, though, that both groups thought they were telling the truth.

  “That’s impossible. If he wasn’t in the van, wasn’t on the boat, and sure as hell wasn’t in the bank…” said George, “where the hell is he?”

  Our first thought was that we had missed him as they disembarked from the Beauregard. Then a state trooper came over, with a paper in his hand. He stood politely by, not wanting to butt in.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Directed to me. I was pleased.

  “Yeah, what you got?”

  “The guy in this picture … are you sure he was on the boat?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Well, just before they went out with the cable, I could s
wear I saw him leave the parking lot over there in an old, beat-up green Chevy. It was weird, it caught my eye, because he was talking on a cell phone, and, well, he nearly fit the profile for a drug dealer, so I noticed him …”

  Everybody was listening intently before he was finished.

  He indicated the parking lot behind and offset to the left of the pavilion. “Right back there.”

  Well, sure. Of course. Right in front of us all the time. Well, more behind, actually. Right where he could see into the back windows of the DCI office, and also part of the boat, and part of the bank. He’d been there all along. Had to have been. Complete control, close contact, and concealed by being obvious. Son of a bitch.

  We put out a message for anybody who saw a car matching that description to merely report it and give us the location and direction of travel. One of those “Do Not Stop” bulletins. Advisedly so.

  The Frieberg officer, who had been assigned to the bridge ramp before the fun started, responded immediately. He gave the same description as the trooper had, and said, “… went through here about ten or fifteen minutes ago, headed west or south, depending on where he went at the intersection …”

  In a perfect world, we would simply have put out a call to block some roads. Unfortunately, all the available assets in N.E. Iowa were either home in bed, or up at Frieberg with us.

  “He picked up a hitchhiker, right up here …”

  What?

  We would have wasted time getting to our own vehicles, especially going back through the crowd. We commandeered two state troopers and their cars, and Volont, George, Hester, and I headed up the bridge ramp toward the Frieberg officer.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “I was standing here, doing traffic control, and this guy came walking up out of the fog … from over that way … and he just talked with me for a couple of minutes. Said he was supposed to meet somebody. I told him that I was stopping all traffic into town, but he said they’d be leaving …”

  “And …” said Volont, tightly.

  “Well, this old green Chevy came up out of the fog, and the door opened and the driver just yelled, ‘Get in, Harv,’ and he did. He said, ‘Good-bye,’ and they left.”

  He looked at each of us, trying desperately to help. “They went that way …” he said, gesturing.

  “What did this ‘Harv’ look like?” I asked.

  I received a pretty good description of Harvey Grossman, Cletus Borglan’s hired man.

  For somebody whose best-laid plans were turning to shit in his hands, Volont was remarkably self-possessed. He directed the troopers to drive us up the hill to the spot where the Huey had landed, up out of the fog.

  It was the fastest 10 mph I’d ever gone. I know the troopers were young, and highly trained drivers, and all that, but I for one couldn’t see beyond the hood of our car.

  When we got about halfway up the bluff, we emerged into blinding sunlight. It was just like climbing above the cloud layer in an airplane. It was so bright in comparison, it almost hurt.

  We covered the remaining mile to the Huey’s location at about 100 mph.

  I’d expected, I guess, that the TAC team members assigned to the Huey would have stayed with her. Of course not. They’d quite properly arranged to be transported to the bank area, via State Patrol, because that was where they were needed. Well, needed then. I really wished they were here now.

  I was wondering just where we were headed. So, too, was Hester.

  “So, you think we just fly and look out the windows for a car?” She said this as we took notice of the enormous traffic jam in the single lane leading down toward Freiberg and the fog. All traffic was still being stopped.

  Volont put down his cell phone. “They just pulled into Grossman’s farm,” he said.

  “What?”

  Volont looked surprised. “You didn’t think we’d pulled our surveillance just because you caught a couple of agents, did you?”

  Actually, I had. If he hadn’t, that meant that he knew about the tractors in the field that night about as soon as I had. Among other things.

  “Get in, Houseman,” he said. “You hold the arrest warrant. I think you ought to serve it.”

  Volont, Hester, George, and I. That was it.

  “You serious?” I asked, as I hauled myself into the dark green helicopter.

  He was. He told the pilot to take us where instructed, and then to immediately return for some of the TAC team. He said that there was a “high probability” that we’d need assistance, so to bring them as fast as possible.

  Right. Like that would be fast enough.

  The pilot had a map of the county, and I indicated Grossman’s farm. “The people we want are there, so far, and they’re armed. Like he said, we gotta hurry …”

  “Hang on, troops,” he said, over the intercom. “We’re gonna haul ass, here …”

  The term fit. We went up, the nose came down slightly, and we were off. Fast. I leaned forward, and saw the airspeed indicator hovering around 110 knots. 120 mph. Cool. It was about fifteen road miles to Grossman’s, maybe thirteen air miles. Six or seven minutes.

  Volont’s cell phone apparently didn’t work in the chopper. He put it away with a scowl, and began to brief us in a loud voice.

  “They plan to flee,” he shouted, “in a private plane. It flew in late last night!”

  I stared at him. Of course.

  “Houseman just missed seeing the plane,” he shouted. “But he did see them grooming a runway for it!”

  Damn. Damn. Of all the possibilities, smoothing the lumps and ridges to make a runway just hadn’t occurred to me. But now that he had said it, it was so damned obvious.

  “Harvey Grossman’s a pilot. He’s apparently with Gabriel. We have to stop them before they leave! It gets too complicated if they take off!”

  No kidding. But it had the advantage that they’d be out of my jurisdiction in a hurry. I kept my thoughts to myself.

  “I have no idea where they might be headed!”

  Sure he didn’t.

  “Here we are! Put us over by the big shed …”

  I looked out, and saw the Grossmans’ house about two miles away. As we swooped in, and I hung on for dear life, I saw an old green Chevy near the house, but no plane. Gone? Already?

  Then I saw the nose of a propeller-driven small plane, blue and white, as we went by the open machine shed and settled to the ground.

  Thirty

  Sunday, January 18, 1998, 1701

  We left the Huey as fast as we could, slipping in the damp snow, and I swear that helicopter was starting to lift off before I was out the door. The downwash was enormous, and we were pelted with chunks of snow, bits of mud and straw, and tiny lumps of cow manure. Then it was gone, and I found myself running toward the cover of a tractor with a scoop bucket attached to the front. I slid to a stop behind the comforting disk of the big rear wheel. I stopped, snuggled up against the tire. The shed with the aircraft was just about straight ahead of me, with a barn to my left, and the house on a little rise to my right. None of them more than 100 feet away.

  The sound of my running, and of the departing helicopter, had stopped at the same time, and it became very quiet in the yard. The only thing I could hear was my own breathing. I cautiously looked to my left, and saw George crouched behind a corner of the barn about fifty feet from me, with Volont behind a couple of rusted old 55 gallon drums between George and the airplane. I looked to my right, and saw Hester was on one knee behind a woodpile. About thirty feet from my position. So far, so good. I did notice, though, than none of us had anything but a handgun. Not good.

  “Carl!” I saw George frantically gesturing toward the inside of the shed containing the airplane. “On the ground, to the left…”

  I cautiously peered around the edge of the tractor tire, expecting to see a man with a gun. Or a bazooka. Or a tank emerging …

  Instead, I saw nothing in the dark recesses except the plane. The sunlight on the snow was making things so b
right the inside of the impromptu hangar was like a black pit.

  “What? I don’t see anything …”

  “To the left of the building,” he said. “On the ground!”

  I looked again. Ah. Oh, my. Grossman had apparently used the space between the shed and the barn as a place to push the snow out of his yard and driveway. He’d left a small space on either side of the ten-foot-high pile, wide enough to permit someone to walk between the buildings. There was a black snowmobile boot, and a dark blue snowmobile-suited leg visible on the far side of the pile. It was very still.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Surveillance. They got down here to keep them out of the plane …” He looked awfully grim.

  As he spoke, Volont rose from his position behind the rusted drums, and ran straight toward the pile and the motionless leg.

  One shot, but so suddenly loud that I jumped. I don’t know where it went, but Volont covered the last ten feet in the air, and hit the side of the shed with a loud thump. I thought he’d been hit, until he got up, knelt over the figure, and then scrambled frantically up the snow pile, tumbling down the other side and out of my line of sight. As he did, there was a burst of fire, and the side of the shed where he had just been erupted with small holes, bits of metal, and dust.

  I caught what I thought was a muzzle flash from inside the shed. It seemed to come from near the tail of the plane, but it was very hard to tell. No handgun, though. No, sir. Automatic rifle.

  I could imagine the surveillance man moving slowly between the shed and the pile, and shots coming through the corrugated steel of the shed and cutting him down. Never had a chance. I glanced toward Hester, and saw that she was looking toward the house. I could only see an edge of the upper floor and part of the roof from my vantage point.

  “Hester …” She turned toward me. “You got something in the house?”

  She shook her head. “Gotta be there, though.”

  Of course. The shooter inside the shed couldn’t see anybody moving in the narrow space between the shed and the pile. But somebody in the house sure could.