Relentless

3

Cunningham and his deputies had gone out to assemble equipment. Watchman started taking rifles down from the locked gun rack and inspecting them and finding ammunition. Vickers had gone to the telephone and was talking, arranging relay contacts through the Highway Patrol dispatcher and the FBI District Director in Phoenix so he could keep in touch with CAP coordinators in three towns and sheriffs’ offices in two Nevada counties and one in Utah. Vickers had a brisk command voice and there was no faulting the efficient precision of his maneuvers to coordinate the search and start drawing up a tight net. “I want State Highway 793 sealed off at interval points and I want the roadblocks maintained until further notice… Keep every plane you can up there. I want every inch of ground air-searched before it gets too dark out there. They’re on foot if they got out of the wreck at all-I’m going out there myself but it’ll take at least an hour to get there. This damned copter pilot of mine won’t take me out there, he says the storm’s too close to that area. I can’t force the son of a bitch to do it.”

Buck Stevens came in with an armload of coats and gloves and boots. “Bummed these from the deputies. See if you can find stuff that fits.”

Vickers was still talking-evidently to his superior in Phoenix. “Yes, sir. I think we ought to take all these bits and pieces of information we’ve got up to this point and run them through the I. D. classifications on the computer in Washington. It may help to get a make on these people. We can try all the usual openings-modus operandi, identity of possible twin-engine airplane pilots, access to military stores of chemical Mace, tracer on that abandoned Lincoln up in Fredonia where they stole the Buick-that was a last-minute switch, the Lincoln broke down on them. It’s probably stolen too, but it’s worth a try. And I’d like some assistance up here as soon as you can provide it. We’ll need to go over the witnesses’ stories and run checks on recently discharged employees-whoever planned this operation had to know a great deal about the situation here and you often find an ex-insider in on these jobs. I’d appreciate getting a good lab crew up here as fast as possible; they seem to have dusted everything for prints but the local equipment is pretty shoddy and they haven’t got any real technicians up here… Yes, sir, I realize it’s expensive and possibly redundant but there’s a good deal of cash involved… Traceable? I don’t think so. Not easily. According to the Chief Constable here they only had a list of serial numbers on the big bills, the hundred-dollar bills, and we all know how easily those can be passed in foreign countries…”

Watchman stopped listening. Vickers was touching all the correct bases. He knew the regulation methods, had a command of the situation and a willingness to make decisions and set things in motion. But there was a weakness in it: the weakness a regular army met when it tried to close with guerrilla terrorists. Computerized organization and modern technology were fine for sealing off elaborate superhighway networks or city streets, or closing in on clues and identities, but Watchman was dubious about how well the technocrats’ methods were going to work in the desert with a high-country blizzard ramming down toward them.