The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [103]
We had drawn in the locations of each hit on an area map. Tried to find a center of gravity for the dots. One of the cops had an MBA, and did an analysis of the center of distribution that would have earned a promotion in the real world. We tried to determine which direction they would go by date of occurrence. We tried to determine how they would possibly scout a potential target. We did sort of a market analysis on items that were best stolen in particular seasons. We tried to find where they lived by correlating locations of burglaries. We skewed the maps by driving time instead of distance from possible origins. Then …
We got information from a snitch as to who they were. We followed them, and on the third night, busted them in a dealership. So much for pure “intelligence.” Oh, yes. The kicker.
“We asked them how they determined what target to hit,” I said. “Turns out that they’d buy a case of beer, put it in the van with the five of them, and start to drive aimlessly around. When the beer ran out, they’d just go to whatever implement dealer was closest, and bust in. No plan. Really skewed our maps on a couple of occasions when the driver had got lost, once in the fog.” I chuckled. “We never thought to correlate the radius with driving conditions on a particular night.”
“The point being?” asked Art, who had also been on that Task Force.
“Well,” I said, “those were criminals we were dealing with. Nobody knows criminals better than a bunch of senior cops. And we couldn’t predict what they were going to do next.” I looked at him. “And here we are, trying to second-guess a professional soldier. Like, what are the odds?”
He glared.
“Unless we have a professional soldier in our midst,” I said, “this is going to be very interesting.” I was hoping that Volont would call in somebody from the U.S. Army, as an adviser. I hoped that one for a long time.
As usual, the real problem was that we didn’t have enough information. Things like “five banks simultaneously” are worthless. We needed to know just who was working with him. How competent they were. How many associates did he have? Hell, just which “five banks” would be nice! And the really big question: Why hit five mediocre banks and get little, when you could go to a metro area, hit one for the same effort, and get a lot? I secretly suspected that our lack of officers had something to do with it. George put it pretty well when he said, “Carl, nothing personal, but with two to three of you on a shift, a bank robber could be fifty miles away before you could block very many roads.”
“Frankly,” said Volont, “they could be a long way before you could block this parking lot.”
Art resented that, bless him. His face got kind of reddish, and he got a familiar, sour look on his face. I noticed that he didn’t have a rejoinder.
Anyway, don’t misunderstand. I love doing the map thing, drawing radii, plotting routes, assigning units, all that good stuff. Wonderful board game. Delightful. But in this case, with the information we had, it was pointless. It was like doing a map exercise on a blank piece of paper.
Volont had resources at his disposal that, given a day or two, could accomplish virtually anything. Really. Somebody would come up with a miniscenario, mark a map, and Volont would start saying things like “We could put a team here and here … a surveillance team here and here …” Wow. Really. Resources like that just trip my trigger. He talked about “helicopter landing zones,” with the solid assurance of a man who utilized them all the time. But it was futile, having the resources and nowhere to use them. Like standing in front of a game machine that took only nickels, with a ten-pound bag that contained only quarters clutched in your little hand.
We stuck with it, though. We had nothing else to go on, or so I thought.
The intercom buzzed, and I answered. Judy, with a phone call for Volont. He took it out in