The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [96]
“Ten-four, Three.”
“And you might want to page the fire chief. We need people to be warned to stay off the street. And call the school, and tell them to keep everybody in, even after school, if they have to. Explain it to ’em.” The school was about as far from the elevator as the Sheriff’s Department.
“Ten-four.”
“How’s Twenty-five?” I asked her.
“I’m just swell…” came a squeaky reply. “But he’s shot my car four or five times now. I’m behind the co-op garage over near the river.”
“Stay there, Twenty-five,” I said. “We can always fix the car.”
I put on my green stocking cap. This was going to take a while. Volont had already gone between two of the houses. I moved in behind him.
As I reached the area where the backyards began, I could see his hand go up. “Careful,” he said. “I can see him.” He had his handgun out, but it was down by his side.
I looked up, way up. There, at the top of the elevator, to the left side, was a bump that might have been a head, with a long stick out in front. Rifle. The base of the elevator was about 150 feet from us. With him up in the air, say 90 to 100 feet … Geometry class, years ago, had addressed this very issue. Pythagoras. I remembered the name. I remembered it was a theorem. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And I realized I’d have to do a square root in my head to be sure. Right. I started to adjust the sights on my rifle.
“How far away would you say he is?” I asked Volont, casually.
“Oh, about a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy-five feet.”
“Thanks.” I backed my sights all the way down to the 100 yard combat setting. At this distance, a bullet from my rifle, even going uphill, would only drop about a quarter of an inch below my aim point. If that.
Volont glanced back over his shoulder. “Can you hit him from here?”
“Yep.” I looked up as a loud crack sounded above us. He seemed to be still shooting toward the jail. “If I can see enough of him, and there isn’t much wind.”
Just as I said that, the sniper stood, and changed position. He disappeared from our view. All I had been able to catch was that he was wearing a mustard-colored hooded coat, with tan gloves. And that his rifle had a scope. A split second, and he was gone.
“Moot,” said Volont. “You happen to have a bullhorn in your trunk?”
“Nope. Fire Department has one, though.” I handed him my walkie-talkie mike.
While we waited for an intrepid volunteer fireman to go to the station, get the bullhorn, and bring it to us, we sketched out a plan of attack.
“I’ll talk to him, and see if I can get him to give it up,” said Volont. “If he starts shooting at anything but the jail or police vehicles, we take him out.” He looked at me. “If that’s all right. I really don’t have much jurisdiction here. Your call.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Problem one … we’re in about the only location that can engage him. If you shoot from the other sides, the missed rounds are going to fall in town.”
He looked at the target area. “Right.”
“So if he does something really stupid, it better be on this side of the building.”
“If not,” said Volont, “we go up and get him.”
“What’s this ‘we’ shit? I don’t do heights.”
“How long,” he asked, “will it take to get a TAC team in here?”
“About two hours,” I said. “Maybe a bit longer. They’re state troopers, and they have to come from all over.”
“Helicopter?”
“I doubt it.”
He sighed, audibly. “You people do need resources, don’t you?”
I almost held out my hand.
The volunteer fireman got to us. There seemed to be some problem with the bullhorn, and he’d brought extra batteries. It was one of those items that was hardly ever used.
While Volont checked out the bullhorn, I looked very closely at that concrete grain elevator. The only way up, from the outside, was via that caged ladder. I remembered the first time, as a kid, I had thought about climbing it. I couldn’t reach the ladder. I double-checked, and saw that the bottom rung was about seven or eight feet off the ground. Still, apparently. There was an aluminum stepladder, erected but on its side,