The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [149]
Volont’s cell phone apparently didn’t work in the chopper. He put it away with a scowl, and began to brief us in a loud voice.
“They plan to flee,” he shouted, “in a private plane. It flew in late last night!”
I stared at him. Of course.
“Houseman just missed seeing the plane,” he shouted. “But he did see them grooming a runway for it!”
Damn. Damn. Of all the possibilities, smoothing the lumps and ridges to make a runway just hadn’t occurred to me. But now that he had said it, it was so damned obvious.
“Harvey Grossman’s a pilot. He’s apparently with Gabriel. We have to stop them before they leave! It gets too complicated if they take off!”
No kidding. But it had the advantage that they’d be out of my jurisdiction in a hurry. I kept my thoughts to myself.
“I have no idea where they might be headed!”
Sure he didn’t.
“Here we are! Put us over by the big shed …”
I looked out, and saw the Grossmans’ house about two miles away. As we swooped in, and I hung on for dear life, I saw an old green Chevy near the house, but no plane. Gone? Already?
Then I saw the nose of a propeller-driven small plane, blue and white, as we went by the open machine shed and settled to the ground.
Thirty
Sunday, January 18, 1998, 1701
We left the Huey as fast as we could, slipping in the damp snow, and I swear that helicopter was starting to lift off before I was out the door. The downwash was enormous, and we were pelted with chunks of snow, bits of mud and straw, and tiny lumps of cow manure. Then it was gone, and I found myself running toward the cover of a tractor with a scoop bucket attached to the front. I slid to a stop behind the comforting disk of the big rear wheel. I stopped, snuggled up against the tire. The shed with the aircraft was just about straight ahead of me, with a barn to my left, and the house on a little rise to my right. None of them more than 100 feet away.
The sound of my running, and of the departing helicopter, had stopped at the same time, and it became very quiet in the yard. The only thing I could hear was my own breathing. I cautiously looked to my left, and saw George crouched behind a corner of the barn about fifty feet from me, with Volont behind a couple of rusted old 55 gallon drums between George and the airplane. I looked to my right, and saw Hester was on one knee behind a woodpile. About thirty feet from my position. So far, so good. I did notice, though, than none of us had anything but a handgun. Not good.
“Carl!” I saw George frantically gesturing toward the inside of the shed containing the airplane. “On the ground, to the left…”
I cautiously peered around the edge of the tractor tire, expecting to see a man with a gun. Or a bazooka. Or a tank emerging …
Instead, I saw nothing in the dark recesses except the plane. The sunlight on the snow was making things so bright the inside of the impromptu hangar was like a black pit.
“What? I don’t see anything …”
“To the left of the building,” he said. “On the ground!”
I looked again. Ah. Oh, my. Grossman had apparently used the space between the shed and the barn as a place to push the snow out of his yard and driveway. He’d left a small space on either side of the ten-foot-high pile, wide enough to permit someone to walk between the buildings. There was a black snowmobile boot, and a dark blue snowmobile-suited leg visible on the far side of the pile. It was very still.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Surveillance. They got down here to keep them out of the plane …” He looked awfully grim.
As he spoke, Volont rose from his position behind the rusted drums, and ran straight toward the pile and the motionless leg.
One shot, but so suddenly loud that I jumped. I don’t know where it went, but Volont covered the last ten feet in the air, and hit the side of the shed with a loud thump. I thought he’d been hit, until he got up, knelt over the figure, and then scrambled frantically up the