Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [2]
‘‘He’s got traffic, Maitland,’’ I said. He couldn’t hear me on the INFO channel, which was fine, as I didn’t want to interfere with his talking to the base station on the AID channel.
She heard him on his third attempt.
‘‘Go ahead, Four . . .’’
‘‘MAITLAND, THIS IS FOUR . . . THIS IS TEN-THIRTY-THREE, I REPEAT, TEN-THIRTY-THREE! WE’VE BEEN HIT, AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, 688 IS SHOT! I NEED ASSISTANCE, FAST!’’
A brief pause.
‘‘Four,’’ she said, pretty calmly, ‘‘I copy ten-thirty-three, ten-thirty-two, one officer down?’’
‘‘Ten-four!’’
‘‘Maitland . . . all cars . . . ten-thirty-three, Basil State Park, ten-thirty-two, officer down, possible automatic weapons . . .’’
I punched up AID as I slid out of the farm lane onto the gravel. Shot? 688 shot?
‘‘FOUR, THREE’S ON THE WAY, ABOUT A MILE OUT!’’ I hit the siren and lights on my unmarked car, and floored it, while trying to fasten my seat belt. The siren was to let anybody who was thinking about doing any more harm know help was on the way. Just maybe they’d back off. The little red light on the dash was for insurance purposes, in case I hit anybody. So was the belt.
I heard a garbled transmission, with the word Three in it, from Johansen. The damned hills were giving me problems as I came down into the valley. Shot? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
It hadn’t rained for a while, and the dust plume behind my car was extremely dense. If somebody shot a cop, they were going to leave, and in a hurry. I thought I should be able to follow their dust. I slid around the biggest curve, onto the old wooden bridge deck, just about lost it on the wood, came off into a dip that just about broke the shocks, and got into the short straight stretch where the marijuana patch valley met the road. I slid to a stop. No dust. Except mine, which came boiling up from behind me, and blocked my view up the valley. No dust. I could see for almost an eighth of a mile. No dust, no cars, no four-wheelers.
‘‘Three’s ten-twenty-three,’’ I said, letting both Maitland and Johansen know I was at the pickup point. I grabbed my walkie-talkie and shut down the car as I got out.
‘‘Come up the valley, Three,’’ said Johansen, sounding unnaturally quiet. ‘‘Be careful, they got machine guns, I think they’re still around . . .’’
Christ! I opened the trunk of the car, and got out my AR-15, and three thirty-round magazines. Dopers with machine guns? Around here? What the hell had the team gotten into?
I was in blue jeans, blue tee shirt, and white tennis shoes, with my handgun on my right hip. Not exactly camouflage wear. I grabbed my dark blue ball cap with the logo ‘‘USS Carl Vinson, CVN 70’’ in yellow letters. Not my choice of clothes to sneak through the woods after heavily armed suspects. I reached back into the trunk and pulled out an old rubberized green rain jacket and put it on. That’d help. SHOT? I fumbled with the little first-aid kit they give us. I’d need that. I looked at the ballistic vest in the trunk. It was white. Its strap-on carrier was white. And, as a joke, I’d drawn a series of concentric circles over the middle, in red marker. It was too hot to wear on days like this, so I kept it in a garbage bag in the trunk. I hesitated a second . . . if I were to put it on, I’d have to do it under my shirt and raincoat . . .
I started up the valley without it, and contacted Johansen on my walkie-talkie. ‘‘Where you at, Four?’’
There was a pause, and then he whispered, ‘‘Straight up, about hundred fifty yards, then off to the right. Stay on the path.’’ After a moment: ‘‘Be careful!’’
No kidding. I felt like a lightbulb in a well.
As I had trotted about fifty yards up the gentle slope, the grass had gotten deeper and the underbrush had closed in on both sides, forming the beginnings of a narrow path. I’d gone another twenty-five yards when I realized that staying on the path might not be a good idea. I moved a bit to my right,