The Big Thaw (44 page)

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.

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 bright 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.

Well, now we knew where. It then became a question of how many. And, given the capabilities of Gabriel, I thought it would be very nice to know who was where.

Since the tractor I had picked as my refuge had a large glazed cab with a pair of frozen coveralls obscuring my view, and since the bucket and engine stood a good eight feet above the ground, I had a dilemma. If I looked at the shed and airplane from the rear of the tractor, I wasn’t able to see the house. If I looked at the house, I wasn’t able to see the shed. Furthermore, it occurred to me that, if I moved toward the front of the tractor in order to see the house again, the lower half of my body was completely exposed to whoever was in the shed. Well, I had to find out who was where. On both sides. I’d now lost sight of Volont, and assumed that there was at least one other member of the surveillance team somewhere…

“George…” Sort of came out in a very energetic whisper.

He looked toward me.

“How many people from the surveillance team …?”

He held up two fingers.

“Where …?”

He shook his head.

I took a deep breath. Well, maybe I could at least locate Gabriel. “Jacob Nieuhauser!” I hollered, generally toward the shed.

Silence. I repeated myself. With an addition. “Deputy sheriff! We have a warrant for your arrest! Surrender!”

Total silence. I tried again. Nothing. I was thinking about reinforcements, and stalling until they arrived. I figured that it had taken us about ten minutes to get to the farm via helicopter. That meant that, if things went completely without a hitch, we could expect the chopper back about twenty minutes after it had left us. And with it, some of the TAC team. At least fifteen minutes from now, and probably thirty, knowing how things usually went.

I looked to my right, toward Hester. She was looking toward the house. “Hey, Gorse!” She looked around. “Cell phone?” I mouthed.

“What?”

I made a “talking on the phone” gesture, and then held out my hand. She fumbled inside her jacket, and then produced her phone. She squared herself facing me, concentrated for a second, and then tossed it toward me, underhand.

Unfortunately, it landed just on my side of the front tractor tire. About fifteen feet from me, and twelve of those feet were completely exposed to whoever was in the shed.

Hester stared at the phone, and then looked up. She appeared to start to say a word that began with an
f
, from the way her lower lip curled under her teeth.

Well, now. I thought about it for a few seconds. Most of the time, if you’re in a rush, you screw up. Calm and deliberate actions usually succeed. Right. With that in mind, I holstered my sidearm, and almost literally threw myself at that damned phone. I slipped as I reached for it, caught myself with my left hand, went down on one knee, grabbed the phone, and hurled myself back toward the safety of the huge rear tire.

Panting, I became aware that there hadn’t been a shot fired. Even better.

Still breathing hard, I dialed the Sheriff’s Department. They answered on the second ring.

“This is… Houseman … here. I need … Grossman’s phone number … really fast…”

I dialed the Grossman house. I was betting that Linda was in the house, and that Harvey and Gabriel were in the shed. I felt that I would be able to convince Linda to give up, or at least to not make it worse for herself by taking shots at us, or signaling to the men in the shed.

“Hello?” Such a little voice.

“Uh, uh, Carrie?” Carrie. I’d forgotten about Carrie.

“Yes.”

“Hi. This is Deputy Houseman. Remember me?”

“Yes. You’re the one behind the tractor, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.” Oh, Lord. “Carrie, can I speak with your mom?”

“She’s not here, Deputy Houseman.” A little voice, but so very serious.

“Oh, that’s too bad. Uh, do you know where she is, Carrie?”

“In the shed with my dad.” Her voice quavered just a bit. “Are you going to hurt them?”

“I sure don’t want to, Carrie.” I didn’t want them to hurt me, either. “Uh … is there somebody else there in the shed with them, too?”

There was a pause. “No.”

No? In there with Carrie? “Are you alone in the house, Carrie?”

“Yes.”

Well, that was sort of a relief. She was effectively out of the way for any activity. But the crucial question was “Where’s the other man, Carrie?”

There was a longer pause. “I shouldn’t tell you. But I can see him. Can’t you? He’s by the snow pile.”

Oh, hell, I thought. That’s Volont.

“I think that man came with us in the helicopter, Carrie…”

“No, it’s Mr. Gabriel. I can see him. He’s
with
that man who came with you. See? Here they come … I better go now…” And she hung up.

“See?” “See?” I looked toward the edge of the snow pile where Volont had disappeared. A moment later, Volont and Gabriel emerged. Together. Sort of. Except Volont had his hands clasped behind his head. As they moved out a bit more, I could see that Gabriel was, as usual, doing things right. None of this gun to the hostage’s head business. No, not him. Gabriel was about three feet behind Volont, with a handgun pointed at the agent’s back. No way Volont was going to be able to try for the gun without being shot. None. Just too much distance between them.