Lying in wait

27

After the phone call to Captain Powell, Sue Danielson's spirits improved immeasurably as well. Ten minutes later, Roger Hammersmith rushed into the window-lined conference room where Sue and I were waiting along with Paul Brendle.

"Got 'em!" he announced. "Sato just radioed into the tower. They're in President's Channel on a southwest heading between Waldron Island and Orcas."

I felt an initial surge of triumph, followed immediately by a rush of concern. On those occasions when I personally have traveled to Orcas, it's been on board Washington State ferries. Because I have an unerring knack for missing ferries by minutes, that kind of travel tends to leave me with a distorted view about how far it is and how long it takes to get there.

"How long will it take?" I asked.

"Not long," Paul said. "Let's go."

Instantly, he was on his feet, pulling on his flight jacket, and heading for the door. Sue and I followed. Walking with a distinct limp, Paul hurried out to the flight line, where a bright red American Eurocopter A-Star helicopter sat at the ready.

Heading there, I glanced at my watch and wondered if I shouldn't rush back into the office long enough to call Captain Powell and let him know what was happening. But it was already too late. While Paul was doing his last-minute visual, preflight check, Roger was already handing Sue into the backseat of the chopper, helping her to don the headset, adjusting the microphone, and showing her the control button on the floor that made it work.

Erroneously assuming helicopters to be similar to automobiles, I headed for the right side of the helicopter. Roger Hammersmith was quick to point out my mistake. In helicopters, the left-hand side is always the passenger side. Properly chastised, I headed for the opposite side of the aircraft.

Embarrassed at being shown up for such a helicopter neophyte, I climbed in. The carpeted interior, the plush leather seats, and the myriad of gauges set in a wood-grain panel reminded me of the dashboard of my 928. Except for one thing-the helicopter had a lot more legroom.

Before Hammersmith could give me any further instructions, he was summoned away by yet another telephone call. Following the directions he had given Sue, I put on my own headset. As I waited for us to take off, I tried to keep preflight jitters entirely to myself.

Shameful as it is to admit, as a kid, I never liked carnival rides-not even those as tame as the Ferris wheel. They made me queasy and turned my skin a sickly shade of green. Bearing that in mind, it goes without saying that I don't take to flying. In middle age, I'm a reluctant and generally grouchy airline passenger as opposed to the blase frequent fliers of the world.

It's easy to understand that prior to that windy, rainy morning I hadn't spent any of my adult life searching for ways to take helicopter rides. Helicopters are noisy. Sitting in a moving plastic bubble high above the ground isn't my idea of a good time.

Paul took several minutes to complete the outside checklist of the helicopter, then he, too, climbed aboard. In his office on the ground, he had been relaxed and easygoing-jovial almost. Once inside the aircraft, he was all business.

"Where exactly did he say they are?" I asked.

Without answering, Paul put on his headset and pressed the Start button of the jet-turbine engine. As the helicopter blades roared into action, they seemed to swallow my question whole. Paul's eyes were busy checking gauges and instruments, and he didn't look in my direction.

"If you want to talk to me," he said, his voice coming through the headset, "you have to push down the black button on the floor. What did you ask?"

"Where are they?"

"Far north end of the San Juans."

"How close to the Canadian border?"

"That depends on how fast the guy is going. From Point Disney on Waldron Island, it's probably only ten miles or so to international waters-ten nautical miles, that is."

Only ten miles? I thought in dismay. By now Captain Powell would be deep in the process of trying to convince Seattle P.D.'s brass that they should take action. Assuming they did that, Powell would have his hands full just coordinating the operation as a joint effort with the law-enforcement folks up in San Juan County on our side of the border. Crossing into Canada and working with Canadian authorities as well as with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would add another whole dimension of complication and difficulty.

Larry Powell has been my squad commander for years. I have considerable faith in his abilities. But since I hadn't been able to make Major John Gray go along with the program-since I couldn't convince him of the validity of my suspicions about what was happening on board One Day at a Time — how could Captain Powell possibly expect to pull the RCMP into line?

"Can we beat Alan Torvoldsen to the border?" I asked.

Paul Brendle shrugged and eased the helicopter into the air far enough to take us out to a small landing-pad triangle that had been painted onto the tarmac. "Like I said before, it depends on how fast he's going and on winds aloft."

I tried to say something more, but now, intent on receiving radio transmissions coming in from Air Traffic Control, Paul held up his index finger, motioning for me to be quiet and wait.

Never before having seen a helicopter pilot at work, I confess to being impressed. I've ridden in Metroliners on occasion-the kind of cigar-shaped, one-seat-per-side, sardine-can-type airplane where, if you're lucky, they keep a curtain closed between you and the pilots and their daunting array of instruments and gauges.

The reason I like a closed curtain is that, if something goes wrong and I can't do a damn thing about it, I don't want to know beforehand. I find it reassuring, however, that Metroliners always have two real, reasonably trained, bona-fide pilots.

Paul Brendle's helicopter had only one pilot on board-him. And it was no wonder he didn't want to talk. He didn't have time. Both hands, both feet, both eyes, and his mouth were all working at once in a display of coordination I found nothing short of dazzling. He was talking back and forth to Air Traffic Control when the chopper lifted off, tilted sharply forward, and sped down the runway, quickly gaining altitude.

While the helicopter had been parked without the engine and blades running, a slanting, wind-driven rain had covered the clear plastic bubble, making it almost impossible to see out. As soon as the blades whirled overhead, most of the moisture had been blown away, but now the windshield wipers came on as well.

As the airport tarmac fell away behind us, I was dismayed to realize there was nothing between me and the ground but carpeted metal flooring and a thin-very thin-layer of wraparound, see-through plastic. To my surprise, however, despite what I knew to be serious gusty winds and thick rain, the ride inside the machine was far smoother than I had expected.

I glanced at my watch again. Time was passing too quickly. I felt more and more urgency about getting back to Captain Powell and letting him know what was up.

I pressed down the button on my microphone. "What about calling…" I began, but Paul cut me off once more with his silencing finger while an air-traffic controller advised us to watch out for a medical helicopter inbound across Puget Sound, heading for the landing pad at Harborview Hospital.

Once more I shut up and warily scanned the horizon. I didn't want to die in a midair crash, and I was relieved when I finally managed to spot the incoming chopper through the pouring rain.

We followed the path of the freeway north across the city. Since it was Sunday morning, most of the downtown city streets appeared pretty well deserted, although there was still a residual backup in both directions on the freeway at the Ship Canal Bridge. Somewhere near Northgate we veered northwest and headed toward Puget Sound.

"What was it you wanted back there?" Paul asked.

I was so fascinated by what I was seeing that it took me a minute to remember. "I need to get word back to Captain Powell, about what's going on."

"No problem," Paul Brendle replied. "I'll have Roger handle it. What's his number, and what do you want to tell him?"

Good question. Should I go ahead and trust to Captain Powell's ability to call in the cavalry, or should I try marshaling reinforcements independently? If Powell was actually making progress cutting through regular channels, a call from me to the San Juan Sheriff's Department would only muddy the issue.

Conscious that every moment of delay counted against us, I gave Paul the number. "Give him the location," I said. "Tell him to try to get us whatever help he can."

Having called for help through official channels, I sat back to worry in silence. What were the chances of our actually catching up with Alan Torvoldsen's boat before it reached Canadian waters? And if we couldn't make it in time, did San Juan County or the Coast Guard have a boat capable of getting there first?

Once we were out over Puget Sound, the clouds began to break up. Whitecaps on the gray-green water showed that the wind had kicked up considerably, but the helicopter bounced very little. Despite my initial misgivings, clearly we were far better off up in the air than we would have been down on the water bobbing around in a boat.

That was discouraging. Rough seas made things tougher, lessening the odds of pulling off a successful rescue mission without someone getting hurt.

What would Alan Torvoldsen do once he realized we were onto him? I wondered. Would he try to run and hide, or would he stand and fight? Was the skipper of One Day at a Time armed and dangerous? If so, how much firepower did he have at his disposal? Enough to bring down a helicopter? The plastic bubble of Paul Brendle's cockpit sure as hell wasn't made of bulletproof material.

A garbled-sounding radio transmission came in. I couldn't understand a word of it.

"What did he say?"

"Mr. Sato, one of our R-22 pilots, just took another peek," Paul answered. "He says they just passed Danger Rock. Looks like they're heading on down the Spieden Channel between Spieden Island and San Juan. The international border is in the middle of Haro Strait on the other side of San Juan Island. My guess is that's where they're headed."

That was my guess, too, even though I didn't possess Paul Brendle's photographic memory for San Juan Island geography.

"We're gaining on them, though," he added. "We've got a thirty-knot tailwind, and they must be running a little slower than we figured."

"So we might still catch them?"

"Of course."

"Where?"

"There's a marine atlas in the back pocket behind my seat. Take a look at that, and we'll see."

Sue, sitting in back, dragged out the oversized book. After spending several minutes studying it, she tapped me on the shoulder and passed it up to me through the space between the two front seats. When I looked back at her, I discovered the skin on her face was a surprising shade of gray-green-almost the same color as the water below us. The same color mine used to be when I stepped off a Tilt-a-Whirl.

"I can't read in moving vehicles," she managed. "It makes me sick."

"There's a barf bag in that same pocket, if you need it," Paul suggested helpfully.

While Sue went rummaging for the air-sickness bag, I busied myself with the atlas. It took some time to sort out the way the atlas worked and to find the proper chart for the area where we were headed. As my eyes ran up the side of San Juan Island, the name Deadman Bay caught my eye. Seeing it seemed like an omen, somehow.

Another radio transmission came through. The basic gist of this one was that San Juan County had a boat heading out from Friday Harbor to offer assistance, but the sheriff was having difficulty assembling his Emergency Response Team. San Juan County's single trained hostage negotiator was leading a religious retreat at Leavenworth up in the Cascades. And the sharpshooter on the San Juan Emergency Response Team was in the hospital in Bellingham giving birth to her second baby.

That meant that our only hope of help was from the two specialty teams dispatched by Captain Powell, and they weren't expected to leave Boeing Field for another ten minutes.

I glanced questioningly back at Sue. Clutching the bag in her hand, she was leaning back in the leather seat with her eyes closed and her face still a pukey shade of green. From the looks of her, it was possible she was out of the game for good.

"What are they up to?" Paul demanded.

Preoccupied with concerns about Sue, I hadn't bothered to listen to the latest radio transmission. "What's going on?"

"They just came around Flattop Island," Paul answered. "Then they sort of eased into a ninety-degree turn and headed northwest."

Once again I picked up the atlas and studied the chart. On it, land masses were colored the same green as Sue's complexion. Water was white with black depth markings that indicated the depth of the water around the various islands and rocky shoals. Suggested courses were lined and numbered in red. Shipping lanes and precautionary areas were marked with purple.

It didn't take long for me to locate the landmarks Paul had mentioned. "What's northwest of Flattop?" he asked.

"Cactus Islands with Spieden before that. Farther north there's John's Island, Stuart Island, and Satellite Island."

"I can't figure out what this guy is up to," Paul said. "Why the sudden course change?"

"Beats the hell out of me," I said, but I had forgotten to push down the microphone button with my foot, so I don't think anyone heard me.

After that, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I tried to follow our course on the charts, struggling to see some correlation between the land masses and water we were seeing below us and the abstract shapes outlined on the charts.

"How do you want to play this one, Detective Beaumont?" Paul asked me finally.

The temptation was there, but I'm a little too old to go around pretending to play the Lone Ranger. It looked as though Sue was out of commission for the duration, but Captain Powell's specialty teams were well on their way by now. It was no time to go in for phony heroics.

"Once we find them," I said, "all I want to do is maintain visual contact until our reinforcements show up."

"Sounds good to me," Paul Brendle answered.

And it would have been a great plan-if things had just worked out that way.

We finally sighted One Day at a Time just as she passed between John's Island and started past the lower outcropping of Reid Island. By then I was familiar enough with the charts that I could actually see the relationship between what was on the maps and what was visible through the plastic bubble.

For a time, we stayed far above them-far enough to stay out of range of a bullet. Some time passed with no visible reaction. The boat continued to stick to her course without the slightest deviation. Then, slowly at first, she began to veer off toward the left.

Prevost Harbor takes a big chunk out of the northeast side of Reid Island. Inside the harbor is a piece of land called Satellite Island. As Paul and I watched, whoever was skippering One Day at a Time turned her sharply in that direction, heading toward the easternmost tip of the island where a sandy beach came to a narrow point.

Just as it takes time and distance to slow down a moving train enough to stop it, it takes time to stop a boat as well. As One Day at a Time neared the spit of sand, instead of slowing down, she seemed to leap forward. Straight forward.

"Holy shit!" Paul Brendle announced over the intercom a moment later. "She's going aground."

As we hovered far overhead, watching helplessly, the boat seemed to suddenly rise up out of the shallow water. For a moment, it seemed as though it would ride on up the sand onto the narrow strip of beach. Instead, One Day at a Time shuddered to a stop, then slowly the aft swung around until it was lying crosswise in the water. Seconds later, it began to list to one side on the curving hull until it seemed as though it would tip over altogether.

"Look at that!" Paul shouted into my ear.

While we watched from above, two figures slipped under the rail, dropped off the lowered side of the listing boat, and fell a couple of feet into the water. After a moment or two, they struggled upright in the waist-deep water and made for shore.

"Go after them," I yelled back to Paul. "Don't let them get away."

The helicopter was low enough that our view of the scene below was surprisingly intimate. As the helicopter bucked forward, I caught sight of a lone figure on deck. A man. I recognized the fringe of red hair, the balding head. It was Alan Torvoldsen, hunkering against the side of the pilothouse, using one hand to keep himself upright on the steeply slanted deck.

Sunlight glinted off something in his other hand-something metal. Instinct more than visual evidence told me the metal object had to be a gun.

I saw Alan Torvoldsen, but only for an instant before he disappeared from my line of vision. Then, instead of seeing the boat, I was staring down at the two escaping figures splashing through the water, churning now in the powerful draft of the helicopter blades.

The two people paused as we passed overhead. They stopped and stared up at us, shading their eyes from the glaring noonday sun, then they both started signaling frantically, beckoning us to come down.

Somehow Sue managed to forget she was seasick. "My God!" she exclaimed from the backseat. "It's Else. Else Gebhardt and Kari!"

"Quick!" I ordered. "Put this thing down as soon as you can."

Paul brought the helicopter down on a narrow patch of beach just as Else Gebhardt came staggering out of the water. As I opened the door, she came running through the swirling cloud of sand kicked up by the rotating blades and fell into my arms.

"BoBo," Else sobbed. Distraught, soaking wet, and shivering uncontrollably, she sagged against me, shouting to be heard above the roar of the helicopter. "My mother! They've got my mother. They'll kill her!"

Sue Danielson had scrambled out of the helicopter behind me. Glancing over Else's quaking shoulder, I saw Sue assisting Kari out of the water and up onto the beach. Kari was limping on what looked like a severely sprained ankle.

I took off my jacket and wrapped it around Else's shoulders, then I led her a few feet away from the roar of the helicopter in hopes of hearing better. "Where is Inge on the boat?" I asked. "And is she hurt?"

"N-n-not…yet," Else answered through chattering teeth. "Sh-she's on one of the b-bunks. B-but they both have g-guns. I'm afraid they'll k-kill her."

After easing Kari down on the ground, Sue joined Else and me. Now that she was back on solid ground, Sue's color was improving. Instead of green, her skin was simply pale. "Who has guns?" she demanded. "Alan Torvoldsen and who else? Who all is in on this with him?"

"Not Alan," Else returned, glaring at Sue with some of her old ferocity showing in her vivid blue eyes. "He's done everything he could to help us," she said. "Even wrecked his boat so we'd have a chance to get away."

I knew what I had seen from above the foundering boat. "If not Alan, then who?"

"Hans Gebhardt," Else answered. "Gunter's father. And the old man's girlfriend."

"His girlfriend," Sue repeated. "Erika Weber? Erika Schmidt?"

"Her name's not Erika," Else answered, shaking her head. "The girl's name is Denise. Denise Whitney."