I saw the sniper pop up, and crack off a round down toward the right side of the building. Toward Twenty-five, the Maitland officer. Or, likely, his car. I pressed the "talk" button on my walkie-talkie mike.
"You okay, Twenty-five?" I asked.
"You bettcha…" came the reply. "But I think my car's dead."
"He's just keeping your head down," I said.
"He sure as hell is," he said.
"YOU ON THE GRAIN ELEVATOR! THIS IS AGENT VOLONT OF THE FBI!" came booming and crackling right behind me. Scared me nearly to death. He'd apparently gotten the thing fixed.
There was no response.
He tried again, this time adding that the suspect should surrender.
I was looking up at the top of the elevator, my rifle at my shoulder and aimed where I'd last seen the shooter, when he came popping back up at the other end of the tower. As I brought my rifle to bear, he cracked off two rounds and disappeared.
"Son of a bitch!" hollered Volont.
"Sorry," I said, "but I almost had him that time…"
I turned, half expecting him to yell again. Close. There was a neat, round hole in the rim of his bullhorn, and he was scrambling back behind some concrete steps leading into the side of one of the houses.
He put the bullhorn back to his face, and I turned toward the elevator. This time, I had my rifle pointed at where our sniper had popped up moments ago.
"YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP. YOU'RE SURROUNDED, AND CANNOT ESCAPE."
Succinct, you gotta admit.
Nothing. I was all set to light him up, and nothing.
I lowered my rifle, and joined Volont behind the steps. Quickly.
"Now what?"
"You looking for suggestions?" he asked.
"Yah."
"Wait him out."
"Okay," I said. "It's gonna get awfully cold up there tonight. He could well freeze to death."
"You got a problem with that?"
"Not in the least."
We were both looking up when the sniper's head bobbed up. Arms extended into the air. No sign of his rifle.
"Shit," I muttered, "I think I could hit him now…"
Volont gave me a withering look, and picked up his bullhorn. "ARE YOU SURRENDERING?"
Faintly, we could hear a voice, but we couldn't make out the words.
"WE CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE SAYING!"
"… I kill him?" wafted down from the top of the elevator.
"DID YOU KILL HIM? IS THAT THE QUESTION?"
"… yes…" came back. Along with something else we lost.
"I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU MEAN. YOU DIDN'T, I REPEAT, DID NOT KILL ANYONE!"
That should have been good news to a man who was about to surrender. If you're under fifty, the difference between twenty years and life can be a long time.
With that, the sniper simply stood up, and began climbing over the top rail. Apparently, it wasn't good news to him.
"Shit," I said. "He's gonna jump…"
He extended both arms in a cruciform, like he was going to do a swan dive or something.
"DON'T DO IT…"
He teetered there for a second. Composing himself for the jump. He just needed to screw his courage up a little bit more.
Then, unexpectedly, he slipped. His feet just went out from under him, his butt smacked into the rail, his arms flailed, and, instinctively, he caught himself.
Our suicidal sniper was now hanging by his hands about 100 feet over our heads. Instinct having taken over when he slipped, it looked like he had lost his resolve. He looked to be hanging on for, as they say, dear life.
Two volunteer firemen thundered past me, followed by an ambulance EMT and Volont. They rushed the fallen stepladder into position, and began climbing frantically toward the top of the elevator.
The fire chief came up beside me. "We ain't got a ladder that will make it more than seventy-five feet," he said, simply. "They better hurry."
"Yeah."
"Funny, isn't it, I mean the way they want to jump, and then they don't?"
"Sure is," I said. "I wonder why he just didn't shoot himself."
It took, oh, probably a minute, for them to get to the top. It seemed like an hour to me, and I was just an observer. They had to go over the rail, and then about twenty feet to my left, before they could get to him. I could hear them hollering to him to hang on.
It was very close. Too close for me.
The two firemen each grabbed at him over the edge, and then the EMT reached way down, and caught the back of his coat in her hands. I could just see the top of Volont's head, and supposed he was pulling on her waist. They all seemed to freeze that way for an instant, and they all sort of heaved together, and the dangling sniper slid back up, over the rail, and they all disappeared from view.
"Know who he is?" asked the fire chief.
"Not yet," I breathed. "But we will…"
By the time they got back down, there was a little crowd of us waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder. Lamar and me, Art, the two troopers from the parking lot, several firemen, and a couple of EMTs.
Volont suggested the troopers handcuff the sniper. As they did so, I got my first clear look at him. I was flabbergasted.
Our trembling, nearly collapsing sniper was none other than Horace Blitek, the screwy member of the Borglan defense team.
You could have, as they say, knocked me over with a feather.
We hauled him up to the hospital in an ambulance, to be checked out.
We were met by my old friend Dr. Henry Zimmer at the entrance to the emergency room of our thirty-bed hospital. As soon as Henry had heard there was a sniper, he had prudently called in two extra nurses, a couple of lab and X-ray techs, and his junior partner, Dr. Paul Kline. Consequently, as soon as Horace Blitek was out of the ambulance on his stretcher, he was nearly mobbed by attention.
"So, this is the guy everybody's making such a fuss about?" said Henry.
"Yep. In the flesh," I said. "He did try to jump, Henry. You might want to know that."
"Depressed," asked Henry, "or just in a hurry?" He chuckled, and started in to the ER, where Horace Blitek could just barely be seen through the little bevy of nurses and ambulance personnel. "We'll see if we can't cheer him up…"
While they attended to Blitek, I got a chance to talk to Volont and Art.
"All he had was an SKS. The pauses were to reload. Just had loose ammo in boxes. No clips." Volont shook his head. "He had to reload by hand after every few rounds."
The SKS doesn't have a detachable magazine, but it was a favorite of some survivalist types, for some reason. Semiauto rifle, 7.62 mm. Chinese manufacture of an old Soviet design. They cost about $75.00, which may have gone a long way toward their popularity.
"So, why didn't he shoot himself?" I asked.
Volont grinned. "Out of ammunition. Not even proficient enough to save one for himself."
"So," said Art, "now we just have to find out why he was so pissed off."
Henry pronounced Blitek fit a few minutes later. "Just some bruises on his forearms, and on his butt. Otherwise, he's just a picture of physical health."
"Thanks, Henry. We just needed to be sure."
"You might want to have a psychiatrist check him out, though. He's really upset. Told me that he's let Gabriel down, and that Gabriel is going to 'get' him." He clapped me on the shoulder. "You do get some strange ones for us, Houseman. But a personal feud with an archangel…"
"Yeah…"
Volont and I conferred. Based on what Henry had just said, we really needed to talk with Blitek. Even in his possibly mentally disturbed state.
"We won't be able to use anything we get against him…"
Volont shrugged. "Then we don't use it against him… but we use it to get Gabriel."