"Acquired."
"What's it look like, Bravo leader?"
"Real hard to make him out but he's wearing a red, white, and blue shirt. I can probably neutralize but can't make a positive ID. Whoever it is, he's staying real low to the ground. Advise."
"If you can make a positive ID on a taker you've got a green light to take him out."
"Yessir."
"Keep him acquired. And wait."
Tremain called Outrider Two, who risked a look through the window. The Trooper responded, "If anybody's bolting, it's Bonner. I can't see him. Only Handy and Wilcox."
Bonner. The rapist. Tremain would love the chance to bring God's revenge down upon him.
"Bravo leader. Status? He's going into the water?"
"Wait, yeah, there he goes. Just slipped in. Lost him. No, got him again. Should I tell the officers in the boat? He'll float right past them." Tremain debated.
"Home base, do you copy?"
If it was Bonner he might get away. But at least he wouldn't be inside for the assault. One less person to worry about. If – though it seemed impossible – it was a hostage there was a chance she might drown. The current was swift here and the channel deep. But to rescue her he'd have to give away his presence, which would mean calling off the operation and jeopardizing the other hostages. But no, he thought. It couldn't be a hostage. There was no way a little girl could escape from three armed men.
"Negative, Bravo team leader, do not advise the troopers in the boat. Repeat, do not advise of subject's presence."
"I copy, home base. By the way, I don't think we have to worry about him. He's going straight out to mid-river. Doubt we'll ever see him again."
III ACCEPTABLE CASUALTIES
7:46 P.M.
"What's that?"
Crow Ridge sheriff's deputy Arnold Shaw didn't know and he didn't care.
The lean thirty-year-old, a law enforcer all his young working life, had been in his share of boats. Dropping stinkers for catfish, trolling for bass and muskie. He'd even been water-skiing a couple of times down at Lake of the Ozarks. And he'd never once been as seasick as he was right now.
Oh, man. This is torture.
He and Buzzy Marboro were anchored twenty yards or so into the river, keeping their eyes "glued like epoxy" on the dock of the slaughterhouse, as their boss, Dean Stillwell, had commanded. The wind was bad, even for Kansas, and the shallow skiff bobbed and twisted like a Tilt-A-Whirl carnival ride.
"I'm not doing too well," Shaw muttered.
"There," Marboro said. "Look."
"I don't want to look."
But look he did, where Marboro was pointing. Ten yards downstream, something was floating away from them. The men were armed with battered Remington riot guns and Marboro drew a lazy target at the bobbing mass.
They'd heard a splash coming from the dock not long ago and had looked carefully but found no takers escaping through the water.
"If somebody did jump in -"
"We woulda seen him," Shaw muttered through the wind.
"- he'd be right about there by now. Just where that thing is. Whatever it is."
Shaw struggled to rid himself of memories of last night's dinner – his wife's tuna casserole. "I'm not feeling too well here, Buzz. What's your point, exactly?"
"I see a hand!" Marboro was standing up.
"Oh, no, don't do that. We've moving round enough as it is. Sit your heinie down."
Tuna and cream of mushroom soup and peas and those canned fried onions on top.
Oh, man, can't keep it down much longer.
"Looks like a hand and look at that thing – it's red and white – hell, I think it's one of the hostages got away!"
Shaw turned and looked at the debris, just above the surface of the choppy water, rising and falling. Each glimpse lasted no more than a few seconds. He couldn't tell what it was exactly. It looked sort of like a net float, except, as Buzz Marboro had pointed out, it was red and white. Blue too, he now saw.
And moving away from them, straight into midstream, pretty damn fast.
"Don't you see a hand?" Marboro said.
"No… Wait. You know, it does look like a hand. Sorta." Reluctantly, and to the great distress of his churning gut, Arnie Shaw rose to his feet. That made him feel, he estimated, about a thousand times worse.
"I can't tell. A branch maybe."
"I don't know. Look how fast it's moving. It'll be in Wichita 'fore too long." Shaw decided he'd rather have a tooth pulled than be seasick. No – two teeth.
"Maybe it's just something the takers threw out to, you know, distract us. We go after it and they get away out the back door."
"Or maybe it's just trash," Shaw said, sitting down. "Hey, what're we thinking of? If they were friendlies they wouldn't've just floated past without calling for help. Hell, we've got our uniforms on. They'd know we're deputies."
"Sure. What'm I thinking of?" Marboro said, sitting down too.
One pair of vigilant eyes returned to the ass end of the slaughterhouse. The other pair closed slowly, as their owner swallowed in a desperate effort to calm his stomach. "I'm dying," Shaw whispered.
Exactly ten seconds later the eyes opened. "Oh, son of a bitch," Shaw spat out slowly. He sat up straight.
"You just remembered too?" Marboro was nodding.
Shaw had in fact just remembered – that the hostages were deaf and mute and wouldn't be able to call out for help to save their souls, no matter how close they'd passed by the skiff.
That was one of the reasons for his dismay. The other was that Shaw knew that while he himself had been an intercollegiate state finals swim champion three years running, Buzz Marboro couldn't dog-paddle more than ten yards.
Breathing deeply – not for the impending swim but merely to keep his turbulent stomach at bay – Shaw shed his weapons, body armor, helmet, boots. A final breath. He dove headfirst into the raging, murky water and streaked toward the disappearing flotsam as it headed rapidly southeast in the ornery current.
Arthur Potter gazed at the window where he'd first seen Melanie.
Then at the window where he'd almost seen her shot.
"I think we're moving up against the wall here," he said slowly. "If we're lucky we're going to get maybe one or two more out but that's it. Then we'll either have to get him to surrender or have HRT go in. Somebody tell me the weather." Potter was hoping for a hellsapoppin' storm to justify a longer delay in finding a helicopter.
Derek Elb turned a switch and the Weather Channel snapped on. Potter learned that the rest of the night would be much the same – windy, with clearing skies. No rain. Winds would be out of the northwest at fifteen to twenty miles an hour.
"We'll have to rely on the wind for an excuse," LeBow said. "And even that's going to be dicey. Fifteen miles an hour? In the service Handy's probably flown in Hueys that've landed in gusts twice that."
Dean Stillwell called in for Henry LeBow, his laconic voice tripping out of the speaker above their heads.
"Yes?" the intelligence officer answered, leaning into his microphone.
"Agent Potter said to relay any information about the takers to you?"
"That's right," LeBow said.
Potter picked up the mike and asked what Stillwell had learned.
"Well, one of the troopers here has a good view inside, sort of an angle. And he said that Handy and Wilcox are walking around inside, looking the place over real carefully."
"Looking it over?"
"Pushing on pipes and machinery. It's like they're looking for something."
"Any idea what?" LeBow asked.
"Nope. I thought maybe they're checking out places to hide."
Potter nodded at Budd, recalling it had been the captain's idea that the takers might don rescue-worker uniforms during the surrender or HRT assault. It also wasn't unheard of for takers to, say, leave a back window open, then hide inside closets or crawl spaces for a day or two until law enforcers concluded they were long gone.