The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [129]
“GSA, I suppose,” said George. “Where the government shops…”
“From the Army,” said Volont. “Via the NSA development people. Damn.”
Gabriel, as an Army Special Operations soldier, quite likely was familiar with those radios before the FBI even purchased them. Even I knew that much.
“We’d better let the troops know,” said George.
“Wait a second. If he doesn’t know we know…” Volont was up to his old tricks.
“No.” George glared at him. “No games. He’s smart, and he knows. We have to tell our own people.”
Volont came up with the ultimate leader’s cop-out. “Then you tell them.”
George knew it. Hell, George was an MBA. George had had all the “corporate think and manipulate” classes you could name.
He reached in his jacket and pulled out his walkie. “CP to all units. The security on this frequency has been compromised. Repeat, this is no longer a secure frequency.” He replaced his walkie-talkie, and looked out the window toward the boat. “There.”
“Well,” I said, “there goes my chance to say ‘fuck’ on a radio.”
The phone rang. Sally put us on the speaker phone as soon as she realized it was Gabriel.
“Didn’t think you’d have the balls, Agent Volont. I planned for the eventuality, but I really didn’t think you had them.”
“Life,” gritted Volont, “is full of surprises.”
I didn’t think that was a particularly good choice of words, all things considered.
“Oh, it is,” agreed Gabriel. “Indeed. Now, I’d recommend getting your people out of the way of my people, or we’re going to be producing victims.” He paused, and then chuckled. “By the boatload, as it were.”
Volont’s face was several shades lighter than normal, but he stood his ground. “Completely counterproductive. Victims mean bad publicity. Victims mean no money for you. Victims, and your goals are done. Gone. Because with victims, we take out your whole team, and the horses they rode in on.”
Yeah. Me too.
“I think I’ll tell the crew to hand out the life jackets. You have five minutes,” and the line went dead.
“… ‘tell the crew to hand out the jackets,’” said Hester. “He is on the boat.”
Nice.
Volont spoke to James of boat security. “All right. Get all your rescue units up and running. All lifeboats, all rescue craft. We’re going to need them in a very short time.”
James stared, and then barked out a laugh. “All available ‘rescue’ equipment is on that boat, out there. Two thousand PFDs and one sixteen-person inflatable boat.”
“What?! What’s a PFD?”
“Personal flotation device. A little half-assed life jacket that looks like a piece of gym mat with straps. As for ‘units,’ it’s fucking winter, mister. The three rescue launches are in storage, with the oil drained out of the motors. They can’t run on ice, anyway. That’s all we have.”
“My God,” said Volont.
“It’s just a damn riverboat,” said James. “In a river that’s thirty feet deep. We meet all the Coast Guard requirements, and we don’t put out from shore in the winter. What do you expect?”
“We can round up about a half-dozen iceboats,” said Sally. “Maybe ten people each … but it’ll take time …”
“Get on it! Jesus H. Christ, life jackets and a rubber boat!” Volont turned to George. “Get over to that Huey and see what sort of good they can do us in a rescue.”
“You might as well let me give you all the bad news at once,” said James. He did. If a passenger used a life jacket, in the water out there today, they would live about fifteen minutes. That was, if the current didn’t carry them under the ice. If they were to be recovered after ten minutes, since the average gambler was about fifty-eight years old, they would likely still die of exposure. The nearest hospital was in Conception County, across the bridge. They had two ambulances. Frieberg had two ambulances. Our entire county could muster another six. By calling in everything available, and declaring an extreme emergency, we still wouldn’t be able to get more than a dozen ambulances to Frieberg in the first hour.
With twelve ambulances, at eight to ten minutes per trip, into an ER that held six, into six hundred