"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 and fifty passengers in the water, meant that more than six hundred of them would be dead in fifteen minutes. But that was assuming they went into the water.
"How deep is it out there?" I wanted to know.
"Winter depth we've never really looked at…" said James. "It's low. Probably lower. That's for sure."
I picked up a phone book. "Anybody mind if I call the lock and dam? To get the depth?" Nobody did. I got the lock master, and he had the data in about a second. They could only give me the main channel data, and the general river stage at Frieberg. They said it was fourteen feet.
I motioned James over. "How much does the boat draw? Like, how deep does she sit in the water?"
He thought for a second. "I'd have to check to make sure, but I think it's seven or eight feet."
I grinned. "Really… Look at this." I showed him the figure fourteen, underlined. "That's the current river stage data from the lock and dam, with the measurement taken by the robot sensors under the bridge, here. So it's the depth of the water about five hundred feet from the Beauregard." I thanked the master.
I went over to Volont, who was on the phone to the Coast Guard station in St. Louis. He was quite exasperated, from the tone. He hung the phone up, and almost ran into me as he turned. "What?"
"I might have the first surprise for our side, I think. Look at this."
"Wait… what?"
"That's right," I said. "If the sensors are accurate, if she sinks, she goes down six or seven feet. And stops on the bottom."
"What's going on?" asked George.
"If Gabriel blows the bottom out of the boat, the people on the lowest casino deck are just going to get their feet wet." I handed him the paper.
The phone rang again, and I expected it to be Gabriel. Nope. It was Lamar, for me.
"What the fuck is going on down there?"
I told him, being sure to get in the good news about the water depth.
"I thought you told me this was going to be a simple goddamned bank robbery at five goddamned banks?"
I explained the part about the five locations. How it all fit the information we had. Just in a different way. "Neater 'n shit, Lamar, you think about it…"
"'Neat'?"
"Well, yeah." I explained just what we had in as positive a light as I could. Not easy. I also said that we appeared to have Gabriel pretty well bottled up, and with a TAC team and a Huey, it was virtually impossible for him to escape. And this time, we even had his photograph.
He decided to come down.
"Before you do, Lamar, be sure to get a couple of people on Nola's sister's place. Linda Grossman's. If we would miss him, for some reason, that's where he might go."
"'Miss him'?! 'Miss him'?! If that son of a bitch disappears this time, all of you better disappear right along with him!"
I thought that was a little unfair. But the message certainly was clear.
Volont was apparently encouraged by the river depth. He was on the no longer secure radio. "Alpha Chase, you clear to take out some tires on the stretch van?"
"Roger that."
"Stand by…" He turned to me. "Come on, Houseman. Let's go down by the tracks."
We hurried out of the pavilion, down into the deepest fog I'd ever experienced. We headed due east, and stopped just behind the big fire truck. In the intense light from its big halogen floodlights, we had a pretty good view of the stretch van. Just sitting there, filled with very still shadows. Several of them.
Volont picked up his radio, and gave the order to shoot out the tires on the van. "Do it."
I'd never seen that before. It was a bit of a disappointment, really. There was no discernible firing, either visually or audibly. Just a popping sound. The front and rear tires on the right side of the stretch van just went flat. Instantly. I think I might have seen a little bit of dust or something, or maybe just rapidly condensing air as it blew out of the tires. Very unremarkable. But now the little group in the van was totally screwed. Their vehicle was immobile. The only other refuge had been the boat, which was now across about a hundred feet of icy water. The concrete area they were parked on offered no cover whatsoever, for at least twenty yards in any direction.
The first three cop cars came around the bluff from the south, and stopped about fifty yards from the van. Now, I figured, we'd see just how disciplined the boys in the van were. If they fired even one round, they were all as good as dead. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
"Let's let 'em stew until we have a lot of people here," said Volont, "and then get 'em out of the van."