A Long December

CHAPTER 02

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2001 16:07

I watched the blue and white ambulance coming toward us, lights flashing, the siren silent now that they had us in sight. I hoped they wouldn’t be too irritated, seeing as how their patient was so obviously dead. It was just that we called them automatically, because we weren’t about to take the chance that an amateur diagnosis was absolutely correct. There was nothing worse, from a lawsuit standpoint, than to take the word of a bystander that somebody was dead and decide not to dispatch an ambulance. I mean, we probably should call a mortician for those who we know to be dead, but if there’s any doubt, we use the ambulances. The morticians are really nice people, but their save rate isn’t too high.

The ambulance rolled to a stop, and the driver stuck his head out the side window. “What have you got for us, Carl?”

It was Red Schmitt, volunteer driver and emergency medical technician, who managed his uncle’s clothing store in the real world. I’d known him for years.

“Hey, Red! What we got is one dead, and I mean really dead, dude lying in the roadway up around the curve. There’s a bunch of tracks in the gravel right in front of you, so you gotta stop here.”

“You bet,” he said, setting his emergency brake and opening his door. He left the engine running. Years of experience with the rigs had taught him that. “What, a tractor roll over?”

“Nope. Not that easy. You guys just follow us on up, now.” Hester and I started walking back up around the curve with the three members of the ambulance crew walking along behind. I felt like we were leading a little parade.

“Why are you way over there? “asked Hester.

“Lookin’ for his other shoe in the ditch on this side. I was checking the other side on the way down.”

I heard Red talking again, and turned around. “What you need, Red?”

“It’s not one of the Heinman boys, is it? “He sounded really concerned.

“No. No, it’s not.” I turned back and we led them up to a good spot about ten yards short of the body, over on the left side of the roadway. “You can take a look at him, if you have to. Just close enough so you can see he’s deceased.”

One of the crew was Terri Biederman. She was in her thirties and had been an EMT with this crew several years ago. I hadn’t seen her since about 1995, though, when she’d left for Milwaukee. I saw from the patches on her jump suit that she’d made paramedic. Cool.

“Mr. Houseman,” she said. “Still here, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. How you been?”

“Pissy, mostly.” As always, direct and to the point.

“Glad I asked.” We’d always liked her.

The third member of the ambulance crew was Meg Hastings, about forty, and a clerk at the Coast-to-Coast store in her real life.

“I’ve been fine,” she said, brightly. “No complaints at all.”

Terri stuck out her tongue.

It wasn’t advisable that we have the ambulance personnel actually examine the body, and they did not. If they’d left a footprint or observed something closely enough to form an opinion, they’d have to testify in court. They were volunteers, and it wasn’t fair to have them waste time from their real jobs just sitting in court because some defense attorney wanted to try to trip one of them up. They did observe the body at a few feet, however, and all agreed that, whoever it was, he was most assuredly dead.

They decided to stick around for the medical examiner, who was on his way to the scene. He might want them to move the body fairly soon, and they were more than willing to help. Besides, EMTs always liked to watch the ME at work. In the meantime, they stood off to one side, watched us, and listened to the Heinman boys tell about what they’d seen. We could have stopped that, but the Heinman boys would be telling the same story in the coffee shop within hours anyway.

I motioned the ambulance crew over.

“Yeah, Carl?”

“You guys meet any cars on your way up here?”

“Sure,” said Terri.

“Very many?”

“Well,” said Red, trying to remember, “at least three or four, I think. Terri was in front, too, though. Maybe she remembers different.”

“More like seven or eight.” Terri was sharp. “You mean getaway-car kind of stuff?”

“Hopefully. We didn’t meet any when we were coming in from the north.” I shrugged. “There are at least four or five different gravel roads they could turn onto before they even got to the paving and into Battenberg,” I said. The ambulance had come from Battenberg.

“At least,” said Terri. “Anybody wake up the Battenberg cop to have him look?” She said it in a disparaging tone that let me know she had a very low opinion of the Battenberg police force.

“I believe he was up,” I said, not knowing but not willing to concede the point. “There’s no information that he’s got anybody coming into town since we asked.” But now I was wondering if he was awake. Crap. “You recognize any of the cars you met? “I asked, back on track and glad to change the subject.

“There was Hank Granger,” she said. “Probably on his way home from his route. That’s the only one I recognized.”

Hank Granger was a rural mail carrier. With flashing yellow caution lights, and U.S. MAIL on the roof of his car, he tended to stand out. Good. He’d be very familiar with the cars he normally encountered on his route. A possible witness already. Things were looking up.

I went back to my car and contacted Sally on the radio.

“Three, go,” came the reassuring voice.

“Yeah, Comm, uh, ten-twenty-one the Henry Granger residence in Battenberg, will you, and see if he’s available for an officer to talk with him in an hour or so?”

“Ten-four, Three.”

“Before you phone him, Comm, any traffic from Forty?” Forty was the Battenberg PD car’s call sign.

“Negative, Three. I contacted the duty officer at his residence via ten-twenty-one, and he advised he’d contact us with any information.”

So she’d phoned him at his house. Good enough. Battenberg was only six miles away from the Heinman farm. Easy reach with my car radio. “Ten-four, Comm. I’ll go direct with him.” He should be in the car, easily, by now.

I called six times, on two frequencies. No response. The Battenberg police department was a two-man operation, consisting of a chief and one officer. At least, they had been until the World Trade Center attack. It just happened that one of them was in the Air Force Reserve, and he’d been called to active service. That left Norm Vincent, the chief, to work most of the shifts. He’d scrounged up a part-timer who worked three evenings a week. Norm had been trying to do forty-eight hours on call, then twenty-four off. Not much opportunity presented itself for sleep, if he’d been at all busy.

“Coram, I get no signal from Forty.” I tried not to sound testy, but Sally should have established radio contact a few minutes after the phone conversation when she’d originally notified him.

By the unabashedly testy “Ten-four, stand by,” Sally agreed with me.

A few seconds later, Sally said, “He fell back asleep, Three. He’ll be out right away.” She sounded disgusted, probably as much with herself as with him.

“Okay, Comm,” I said, intentionally dropping the 10 code. It’s more informal, and friendlier. That’s all I had to say for her to interpret something like, “Let’s start looking a little sharper up there.” “While we’re at it, do you have an ETA for DCI mobile lab?”

“They’re en route,” said Sally. “My last contact was that they were going to be to you within forty-five minutes, and that was… nineteen minutes ago.”

The “nineteen minutes” pleased me. It was her way of telling me that she was still pretty damned efficient, thank you very much. It also meant that they must have been at a scene fairly close to us.

“Ten-four, Comm. And the ME?” We wanted the medical examiner to be at the scene before it got really dark, because we didn’t really have the good auxiliary lighting equipment we’d need to give him the best look at the scene. If night beat him, we’d have to call out a truck from the Battenberg volunteer fire department, with its auxiliary lighting equipment. That’d make for quite a crowd and only increase the chances that we’d obliterate some evidence.

“ME is Dr. Zimmer, and he’s been en route from the clinic here in Maitland since seventeen-oh-one.” She was sounding more at ease as the conversation progressed, but I knew that she was still kicking herself over the Battenberg PD call.

“Ten-four, Comm.” I would have said something like “thanks” except we’d both have thought I was being condescending.

I walked back to the body in the road, and to the gathered ambulance crew. They had walkie-talkies, too, and I was sure they’d heard about the Battenberg officer sleeping. They had.

“Fell back asleep, huh? “asked Terri.

“Yep.”

She just shook her head.

“So, then,” I continued. “You didn’t recognize any other cars on your way up?”

“Nope. So, who’s this?” she asked, indicating Hester.

“Hester Gorse. I’m an agent with the DO.” Hester stuck out her hand.

“Oh,” said Terri, extending her hand and shaking Hester’s. “A state investigator. We’ve never met. I’m Terri Biederman. Recently of Milwaukee, but born here. Paramedic.”

I walked over to Lamar. “You hear my radio traffic about Battenberg?”

“Yep. That dumb sonofabitch.” He said it as one word. Calmly, though. “I told him he ought to loosen up on his damned budget and hire some of our reserves.”

“I’ll get with him as soon as I can,” I said. “He still may be able to help.”

“It ain’t like he has before,” said Lamar. “But go ahead. We gotta work with him.”

I had a bit higher opinion of Norm Vincent than Lamar did, but I just let it ride. We all had to work together.

As it happened, both the DCI lab team and Dr. Henry Zimmer arrived at the same time. Both had been equally lost, as it turned out, and had actually met when the lab team flagged Henry down to ask directions. Henry got quite a kick out of that one.

Once there, though, it turned out to be like old home week. Henry and I were longtime friends. Hester and Henry had worked together off and on for years, and were glad to see each other. Like all our rural medical examiners, Henry was a general practitioner, and had a large private practice. Apparently he was the doctor for the Heinman boys, and they exchanged waves. He was also my doctor, and greeted me with “Still got the cookies in your camera bag?”

I got him some.

Hester introduced her lab crew to us, a youngish sort named Bob Ulrich and an older man named Dave Franks. Introductions over, she looked down the road toward the body of the still-unidentified victim.

“Well, let’s get started.”

We’ve found that, over the years, it’s best if the investigators don’t get too involved with the initial stuff the lab crew does. We want them to find things for themselves and not be distracted by us as we focus on some particular items of evidence. We proceeded together but separately, so to speak. That is, until it came time to move Gary’s car back from the human debris field. At that point, we formed a little crowd.

Gary was told to back up very slowly and to stop when Bob signaled him. He did, and had backed up not more than fifteen feet when he was told to stop.

“Now, better call a wrecker, Sergeant,” said Dave, the senior lab man. “We’re going to have to have those tires.”

“What?”

“We need your tires. They’ve been in our, uh, evidence. There may be small fragments and tissues adhering to them.”

“You have to be shitting me.” Gary was astonished.

“I assume you have to get permission,” said Dave.

Dave was right. The tires had been in the blood and bone fragments, and some of that material was now transferred to them. The lab crew was going to take all four, as it turned out, and Gary was pretty disgusted. He’d have to get permission from high up, get the wrecker and four new tires ordered out to the scene. It was probably going to affect the maintenance budget for his entire post, and would reflect on his personal stats, as well. All just because he stopped a few feet closer to the body, in a well-intentioned effort to protect the scene.

“Don’t let it bother you,” said Lamar. “We’ll get a receipt for the tires to you. And you ought to get ‘em back in, oh, what you think, Carl? Three-four years?”

“Not any longer than that,” I said.

I don’t think it took any of the sting out.

“Look at that,” said Lamar, pointing to the mobile crime lab truck. “I wonder when they got that?”

The lab crew had set up a portable generator with halogen lights attached to an extendable aluminum tripod, so we had truly exceptional lighting for our first real look at the extended debris field.

“Wow,” I said. “Cool.”

“Those halogens set somebody back,” grumbled Lamar as he moved closer to take advantage of the brilliant lighting.

The debris field, if you could call it that, was roughly fan-shaped, with the small end closest to the body. There was blood, naturally, but a lot of it had been distributed in the form of a reddish haze by the blast, and we were confronted by mostly large droplets as opposed to pools of the stuff. It was a lot like spatter painting. There were two relatively large sections of skull, with the attached skin and hair. That would be a big help. The hair appeared to be either black or very dark brown. At that point, I appreciated any identifiers at all. There were a couple of chunks of bony tissue that would eventually be identified as parts of the maxilla. Most of the teeth were still attached, but some appeared to have been sheared off by the blast. They eventually salvaged four good upper teeth. “Good” in the sense that a dentist could use them to attempt to identify the former owner. There really wasn’t an identifiable clump of brain tissue, except for one section about four inches by three that was near the far end of the debris field.

“This piece carried further, because it had more mass than the smaller fragments,” said Bob, the younger lab member.

“Um hum,” said Hester. She knew that, of course. It was just a matter of basic ballistics.

“That’s the cerebellum, there,” said Doc Zimmer. He got a quizzical look from Bob. “I’m no expert, but if it was a contact shotgun wound to the back of the head, we’d see the blast effect distributing the majority of the brain tissue.” He peered more closely at the yellowish gray matter. “Whereas this bit was probably sucked out by the vacuum caused by the gases from the bore, and wasn’t damaged all that much.” He shrugged. “The brain divides pretty naturally into sections, with enough trauma.”

“I’ve got some teeth and fragments of teeth scattered up here,” said Dave, the older lab man. “Some still in pretty good shape, at least the tops.”

“Maybe another fragment of jaw?” asked Bob, pointing to a light grayish item that was speckled with blood.

My turn. “Nope. That’s the plastic wadding from the shotgun shell,” I said. The plastic wadding holds the shot pellets and butterflies out as soon as it leaves the barrel. That was a good find, as it would enable us to nail down the exact caliber or gauge of the shotgun.

Our luck held, as we found about half an eyeball, mostly the retina.

“Looks like he had brown eyes,” said Bob.

“Well, one, anyway,” I said. It was an attempt at a bit of humor, to ease the stress.

We stepped back again and regarded the entirety of the scene.

“Mostly bits and pieces,” I said. “That’s only good if you like puzzles.”

“It’s not a lot,” said Hester, “but we at least have someplace to start.”

She was right about it not being a lot. Just some hair, partial dentition, and hopefully an eye color. The only concrete ID materials we had were his fingerprints, and we could only hope they turned up something concrete. In the meantime, we’d have to circulate a pretty basic description and see if anybody resembling it turned up missing. I was sort of praying that he was local. If not, we could be looking at the remains of somebody from just about anywhere.

Lamar and I pulled on some latex gloves and helped Henry turn the body over, so he could feel the abdomen and get a guess as to the core temperature of the deceased.

The absence of a face was a lot more pronounced when he was rolled over. What bothers me the most in the recently dead is usually the face. No problem here.

“Ugh,” said Henry. “What a mess.”

I noticed that there was a gold chain around the dead man’s neck. Anything in the way of an identifier was good, although it looked like a perfectly ordinary chain from where I stood.

“Still some warmth in there,” said Henry, mostly to himself. “Let me check his pockets to see if he has any ID.”

“Watch for needles,” warned Hester.

“Sure,” said Henry. He went through the jeans pockets, and came up with a quarter and two dimes.

“That’s it,” he said. “No billfold, nothing else.” He smiled at Hester. “And no needles.”

Henry, as county medical examiner, authorized the remains to be taken to Maitland Hospital, where they’d be examined by one of the state forensic pathologists as soon as one was available.

“Are one of you,” he asked Hester and me, “going to want to attend the autopsy?”

“Yes,” said Hester. “If you could let us know when it’s scheduled…”

“Sure,” said Henry. “Shouldn’t think it’d be too very hard to determine the mechanism of death in this one.”

“God,” said Hester, “I should hope.” She motioned to Lamar. “Could you have an officer meet the body at the hospital and stay with it until the pathologist gets there?”

He could and would.

“Great. Either I’ll be at the autopsy or Carl will,” said Hester. “Bob, be sure to get case prints as soon as you can. That means you have to be at the hospital, because we leave the wrists bound until the pathologist cuts the cuffs. Okay?”

The senior lab technician agreed, a bit reluctantly. Case prints are “fingerprints” that encompass the entire hand, past the crease of the wrist. That way, even if the person being identified has just left a partial palm print on some surface, you can at least get a fair comparison. It was also for normal ID purposes, since our victim was without his face.

“And AFIS as soon as possible,” she said. AFIS stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Its computerized database is composed of links to FBI, state, local, and independent databases. If a set of prints has been recorded, AFIS can retrieve it, identify the owner, automatically link with the Computerized Criminal History system, and get any criminal record from CCH within seconds. It was a great system. They also make a portable print scanner, but Iowa hadn’t chosen to provide one of those to its lab crews. Therefore, they had to do an old-fashioned ink and roll job, and then take the prints to a regional console. It was still a tremendous improvement over the old method where you had to have a suspect, and then the records were searched on that name. Those old manual searches made it impossible to obtain an ID from prints alone, simply because of the manpower required to search the millions of records.

“I wish this was happening about four years from now,” said Bob. “The Iowa Laboratories facility ought to be up and running by then.” He said it in a dreamy sort of voice.

The new facility was scheduled to have the DCI labs, the University of Iowa Hygienic Lab, the state medical examiner’s lab, and the Department of Agriculture labs all under one roof, in Ankeny, Iowa. As opposed to today, where items that needed the attention of more than one lab could take hours just to transfer from one location to another. He was right; it would have been nice.

At this stage of the crime scene investigation, standard procedure was to allow the DCI lab team to do their thing with the collection and inventory of the evidence. It’s the most effective way, and they do it much better if we don’t interfere. So, since we were effectively done at the crime scene, Hester and I walked up to my car to discuss things. We didn’t want to be overheard.

“If it’s dope-related, or gang-related,” she said, “we might get a tumble pretty quick. They do things like this to get a message out. We should hear pretty fast if that’s what’s going on.”

“As long as they want to get the message out around here,” I said. “If they’re trying to send a message to this guy’s cousin in Cincinnati, we’re sort of out of the loop.”

“Well, yes.” She was making an entry in her Palm Pilot. Something else I was going to have to get.

“You like those?”

“Ummm… you bet,” she said, closing the little cover. “Downloads right into my PC. Wonderful thing.” She slipped it in the pocket of her slacks. “Just get a rechargeable one, not the AAA-battery kind. Much more convenient.”

“You know of any DNE undercover stuff under way up here that I don’t?”

“Nope. Just Harlan and Feinberg working the meth buys.”

I thought for a second. “It sure looks dope-related, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not quite convinced yet, though.” I looked at her. “How about you?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’m at least open to suggestions.”

We decided to head on in to Battenberg, and have a chat with Hank Granger, the rural mail carrier the ambulance crew had met on their way to the crime scene. He probably wasn’t going to be a gold mine of information, but he seemed like a good place to start.

“Hey, you know, Hester,” I said, “in all the time we’ve worked together, this is the first time you’ve actually been in our office when we got one of these calls.”

“And it was truly exciting, Houseman.” She grinned. “I just love driving in dust clouds.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.”

“I’ll get even, sooner or later,” she said.

At that point, Jacob Heinman came over to us. “Deputy?”

“Yeah, Jacob. You remember something else? “I always hope.

He gave us that shy smile of his, and said, “Nope. But me and Norris just wanted you to know… that ticket at the accident.”

“Yes?”

“Well, we don’t hold it against you. I mean we know you were just doing your job.”

“Well, thanks, Jacob. I appreciate that.”

“We still think,” he added hastily, “that that bus was in the wrong. But it’s okay with us, anyway. You did what you thought was right.”

“I always try,” I said. “Thanks.” I thought his concession was sort of Nation County’s legacy from the 9/11 attack. I was touched.

“What was that about? “asked Hester, when he’d moved back down the road toward Lamar.

I told her about the accident, and his statement.

“I think he’s right,” she said. “How on earth could you give a sweetheart like that a ticket?”

“Don’t go there, Hester. I’ve had a long day.”

“You old grump.”

15: 48

It was time to rethink our options.

Now that the people who were shooting at us were fairly sure that we were in the barn, the main problem with our position was this: Both of our exits were covered from the area of the shed and chicken coop, where the bad guys were positioned, and the whole area from the barn to the road could be covered by somebody up in the old concrete silo. The barn’s main door faced directly at the shed. Anybody trying to leave by that door stood a very good chance of being shot before they even got out of the damned barn. The second door, the old one with the daylight showing at all edges, would allow one or two of us to get out of the barn itself without being seen. Well, assuming that the people who were trying to kill us remained in the shed or the chicken coop. With that door option, it was subsequent movement that would get you killed. If you went right, you’d be visible from the shed in about five feet. If you went left, you could be clearly seen from the chicken coop after about forty feet. So, as long as you didn’t want to go anywhere, you could get out.

And, of course, if they had got somebody to the old concrete silo, which in all likelihood they had, they could cover the second door from the get-go.

We couldn’t get out. Tactical obstacle number one.

Seeing as how we couldn’t leave, other problems just sort of popped up everywhere. Our field of view was absolutely rotten. Even from George’s position in the loft, there were large areas of the farmyard we just couldn’t see. Granted, we did have a good view of the shed. But, we only had a partial view of the chicken coop. And the concrete silo was out of our field of view completely. We weren’t going to be able to tell if there was anybody up in the thing until one of us tried to get out the old door. Tactical obstacle number two.

We couldn’t send somebody out to “draw their fire.” Unlike the movies, you don’t draw straws for that sort of thing. We were just going to have to stay put until one of two things happened. First, and most hopefully, backup would arrive and bail us out. Please, God. Failing that, those who were trying to kill us were going to either storm the barn, or do something downright shitty like set it on fire, and force us to make a break for it. Worst-case scenario, believe me. None of us had any idea just how many bad guys there were, but I was pretty sure there would be enough of them to cover both exits.

I figured we were pretty obviously outnumbered. Tactical obstacle number three.

Then there was the matter of firepower. So far, everybody we’d been able to see shooting at us had what appeared to be an AK-47, or something in that general category. Large caliber, and they had been shooting full auto. The 7.62mm rounds they were firing could easily penetrate our Kevlar tactical vests, even the ones with ceramic plates in the center of the chest. We, on the other hand, had my AR-15, Sally’s shotgun, and four handguns. We were thoroughly outgunned, and except for my rifle, outranged as well. Tactical obstacle number four.

The only good thing was, so far, none of us was hurt in such a way that we couldn’t run. If we had to make a run for it, maybe one or two of us could actually traverse the hundred-yard lane and get to the road. Not that that would do much good unless backup was there, since our cars were parked at the Heinman boys’ farm about a mile up the road. So we had no place to go even if we did get out of the barn. Besides, I’d never been particularly fleet of foot, and at fifty-five years of age, six feet three inches, and 280 pounds, I was fairly certain that I’d not be able to make it up the lane at any great speed. I’d just be a large, slow-moving target. Tactical obstacle number five.

And I was sure I’d missed one or two others. No need to dwell on more than five.

It was pretty obvious that we were all running through those obstacles and concluding along the same lines. Morale was beginning to sink.

Sally spoke up. “Anybody want part of a Three Musketeers bar?”

Then it started to get dark. That meant that it was also only a matter of time before it got colder. I’d checked the forecast before we left, and they were expecting temperatures in the single digits. It was going to be a very long night.

Sally’s walkie-talkie crackled. I couldn’t quite make out what the message was, but she scooted over to me and held out the mike at the end of the pig-tailed cord.

“Forty is at the end of the lane,” she said. “He says he can see the barn, and thinks he can make it up here.”

Forty was Norm Vincent, the Battenberg chief.

“No way,” I said, and took the mike. “Forty, Three.”

“Yeah, go ahead, Three.”

“Don’t come up here. You won’t make it past the old foundation.”

“I can drive right up there. I don’t see anybody.”

“No, but they see you. Stay where you are, or go back a little further around the stop sign. They have AK-47s, I think.”

There was a silence. Then, “Three, Forty?”

“Go.”

“The, ah, ambulance is here now, too. We don’t think it looks too bad.”

“Stay there, Forty. Wait for more backup.”

“Stand by, Three. Just a sec,” said Norm. After a moment, he said, “We understand you have an injured officer?”

“Ten-four. Not life threatening,” I said, glancing at Hester. She gave me a thumbs up. “Stay put until we advise for you to come up.”

He acknowledged, but didn’t sound too convinced.

I handed the mike back to Sally, and walked sort of half bent over to the road side of the barn. Looking out through the cracks, I could not only see most of Norm’s blue patrol car, but I had a clear view of the top half of the Battenberg ambulance.

I gestured to Sally. “Tell ‘em to back up, will you? “I went past her and back to the side of the barn where all the bullet holes were. We had to keep an eye on what our suspects were doing.

The light from the setting sun was streaming through the barn board cracks and was making it difficult to see when I looked to the left of the shed. The sunlight was also illuminating every dust mote in the place, and was beginning to make it equally difficult to see within the barn itself. If there was ever a worst time for us to have them make a move, it was about now.

“Sally…”

“Yeah?”

“See if you can contact George. Our visibility here is going to be crap until the sun goes behind that hill. Maybe he can see better.”

The sunlight also meant that it was clear. Clear at night meant colder. Crap. This was probably the warmest part of the day in the barn, and I thought it was probably about twenty degrees. I could see my breath in the shafts of sunlight.

“Hang on,” said Sally. “Lamar’s here.” Again, she handed me the mike.

“You there, Three? “It was good to hear his voice.

“Ten-four, One. Alive and kickin’.”

“Is everybody all right?”

“Ah, negative. I 388 has been hit with a fragment.”

“Is it ten-thirty-three? Do we have to get in to you now?”

“Ah, negative, One. Negative.” I looked over at Hester. “How you feeling?”

I could just make out her answer. “No problem.”

I thought for a second. “We need to get her out, but not urgently. I don’t recommend anybody coming down the drive or across the yard. Not in daylight.”

“Ten-four,” said Lamar. “I got about a dozen state troopers ten-seventy-six. Should be here in less than ten minutes.”

That was reassuring. “Glad to hear it. TAC team?” I was hoping. The TAC unit would be equipped with M -16s.

“Negative, not yet. They’ve been notified.”

That was too bad. A standard issue state trooper would have a shotgun and a handgun. Shotguns, especially over several hundred yards of open ground, would be hopelessly outranged by the AK-47s our opponents seemed to have.

“Ah, ten-four. One, these guys have AKs. You ten-four on that?”

“Ten-four.” He was. Lamar wasn’t a ballistics expert, but he knew enough about 7.62mm rounds. He’d been hit just above the ankle with one fired by a barricaded suspect in 1996. He hadn’t been able to walk well since, and hadn’t had a single day without pain. He was lucky he still had a foot.

“Where you at, Three?”

Now there was the question. I felt the chances of the opposition listening in on our radio traffic were probably not too good. Nonetheless, I wasn’t certain I wanted to reveal our exact position. I looked up at Sally, at the other end of the mike cord.

“What do you think? Should we just go ahead and tell?”

“I’d really like to get out of here.”

That wasn’t what I’d asked. But there was no rescue possible if they went to the wrong building.

“We’re in the barn, One. The basement.”

“Ten-four.”

“Except George-he’s in the loft. He’s lookout.”

“Ten-four,” said Lamar, and as he spoke, I heard a siren over his mike. The troopers were beginning to arrive.

“We think most of the suspects are in the shed. The one on the other side of the barn from you.”

“The one with the metal roof?”

“That’s it. As far as I can tell. We haven’t seen any movement in the last few minutes.”

“Okay, Carl. I’ll be back up on the radio in about five minutes.”

“Ten-four, One. Glad to have you here.”

Sally called George. He was fine, and hadn’t seen any movement for several minutes. He thought he might be able to see fairly well to our front, as soon as he could finish up moving moldy hay bales away from the walls. He’d been unable to get even close to the front wall because they’d been stacked almost to the ceiling.

Sally and I both gave our full attention to peering out through the gaps in the boards and trying to see if there was anybody moving around the tin shed. Nothing.

“You ‘spose they left?” she asked.

“Might have,” I said. I didn’t think so, though. “I think there’s a better chance they’re just gettin’ reorganized.”

We waited. About ten minutes after he’d said he’d be back in five, Lamar called.

“Go ahead,” said Sally. She started to move closer to me, to hand over the mike again.

“You relay,” I said. “I think I see something moving.”

She just paused for a moment, and then said, “Go ahead for Three. He can hear you.”

“We got people on the road on the other side of the valley, and in the bottom, and up on the hill past the farm,” said Lamar. “More comin’ all the time.”

“Good,” I said. That meant that the area was being surrounded, to cut off the escape of just whoever was shooting at us. But as I looked, I was certain something was moving, to our left, behind a screen formed by an old woven wire fence and a bunch of scrub that had grown up entangled through it.

“Three advises ‘good,’ One,” said Sally.

“Tell him to stand by,” I said, and brought my rifle up to my shoulder.

“Stand by,” said Sally. I heard her move away to my right.

“Left,” I said. “Behind the old wire fence. Really down low…”

As I spoke, a figure rose up, threw something, and disappeared back into the scrub.

There was a loud thump, as though a heavy rock had struck the barn above our heads.

“He throw a rock? “asked Sally.

Then the “rock” exploded.