Chris Grabenstein - Free Fall

“Evacuate to the far edges of the parking lot,” he says over and over and over.

“Keep calm! Do not panic!” echoes his brother with the battery-powered bullhorn.

“Move them out and lock it down,” Ceepak says to the two Murrays. “Who’s inside?”

“Brooks Perry and Jack Getze,” says Dylan.

Ceepak and I go swimming upstream; make our way to the boardwalk.

Which is almost empty.

Ceepak grabs the radio clipped to his belt.

“This is Detective Ceepak. Detective Boyle and I are on the scene. What’s our situation?”

“This is Officer Perry.”

“What’s your twenty?”

“We have taken up a position in the pizza stand west of the StratosFEAR ride. We have the ride operator, Mr. Shaun McKinnon with us.”

I can see the Free Fall’s tower rising against the early evening sky maybe a hundred feet in front of us.

“Is Mr. McKinnon injured?”

“Negative. The old guy with the gun threw him out of the control booth and told him to run away. He didn’t. He found us instead.”

“Maintain your position. Detective Boyle and I are on our way.”

“Okay. Good. One question-the old guy with the gun. McKinnon tells us he is the day operator of the Free Fall and that his last name is Ceepak.”

“Roger that. He is my father. He should be considered mentally unstable and lethally dangerous. There were reports of a gunshot. Can you clarify?”

“Getze and I were on routine boardwalk patrol, up by Paintball Blasters. Heard the single round fired. Thought it was a kid with an early Fourth of July firecracker. Mr. McKinnon found us. Told us how, uh, your father threatened him with a weapon. Described it as best he could. From our observation post, it looks like it could be a Ruger nine-millimeter pistol. Seven plus one capacity.”

That means Mr. Ceepak has seven bullets left before he has to reload.

“And the hostage situation?” asks Ceepak as we crouch our way forward toward the pizza place, using the game booths and food stalls along the way for cover.

“Your father has a middle-aged bald man with him. Fifty, fifty-five. Goatee.”

“It is David Rosen,” says Ceepak.

“What’re they doing here?” I ask.

“Unclear at this juncture.”

Yeah, if Mr. Ceepak was trying to help David Rosen “make a run for the border” he’s doing a lousy job, unless he’s also arranged for a submarine to come pick them up at the pier.

“Hang on,” says Officer Perry. “There’s movement over at the base of the ride. Something’s going on …”

Ceepak and I hustle faster.

He hand chops to the left.

We scoot up a narrow alleyway behind a row of booths and shops until we come to a service door, a rear entry into the pizzeria.

“We’re coming in,” Ceepak announces into the radio so Perry and Getze don’t twirl around and blast us when we come sneaking up behind them.

We push the door open, keep hunkered down, and duck-walk up to the open-air front of the pizza place to take up a position behind the counter with the two cops and Shaun McKinnon, the other factory-trained Free Fall operator from Ohio.

“Does my father know you are over here?” asks Ceepak in a tight whisper.

Getze shakes his head.

All five of us are crouched behind the counter. Fortunately, the sun is setting behind us. The pizza parlor is cloaked in shadows.

Unfortunately, what we see is terrifying.

Mr. Ceepak has the snub nose of his small pistol jabbed into David Rosen’s back.

He is marching Rosen up the steps to the ride.

“Sit down.”

He shoves David into a seat. Tucks something into the front pocket of David’s shirt.

“Don’t hang up on me, Davey. If you do, you die.” He cackles a laugh and backs up; keeping his pistol trained on Rosen every step of the way to his control booth.

The front window is open so he can keep his Ruger up and aimed at David. With his free hand, he raises a crinkled brown bag of something to his lips. Takes a swig.

The bottle bag goes down.

“Now we just have to wait for my idiot son to show up.”

I hear a clunk and thud.

The Free Fall starts climbing up its 140-foot tower.

And the shoulder harness over David Rosen’s seat?

Mr. Ceepak never lowered it.

The StratosFear continues its excruciatingly slow ascent up its 140-foot tower.

All the foam-padded shoulder restraints are locked in their upright positions like multiple pairs of raised arms. It’s almost as if the ride is surrendering.

“Okay, this is bad, man,” whispers Shaun McKinnon. “Way bad.”

The rest of us stay silent. Watch the Free Fall’s only rider, David Rosen, climb higher and higher. It looks like he’s gripping the sides of his seat with both hands. I know I would be. Imagine sitting in a chair, without a seat belt or any other kind of restraint, and being hoisted half a football field high in the sky.

“When the chairs reach the top, it’ll stop,” says McKinnon. “But if Joe punches the launch button, that sucker’s going to plunge, man. Speeds will exceed forty-five miles per hour. No way that dude up there doesn’t fly out of his seat. No way he survives a 140-foot drop.”

Ceepak whips out his radio. Clicks over to the Chief’s channel.

“Chief Rossi, this is Detective Ceepak,” he whispers into the radio. “My partner, Detective Boyle, and I are on the scene, twenty feet away from the StratosFEAR Free Fall, with officers Perry and Getze as well as a licensed ride operator, Mr. Shaun McKinnon. We need to contact the state police. Scramble the T.E.A.M.S. emergency response unit.”

The T.E.A.M.S. guys are, basically, the Navy SEALS of the NJ State Police. A full-time emergency response unit, with special weapons and tactics teams, they are prepared to handle extraordinary events, like, for instance, a screwy old drunk hauling a murder suspect up to the top of the world’s tallest dunking machine.

“What’s our situation, John?” asks Chief Rossi.

“My father, Joseph Ceepak, is holding David Rosen hostage on the StratosFEAR ride.”

“Your father?”

“10-4. He is also a licensed Free Fall operator currently in the employ of Sinclair Enterprises.”

“Your father?”

Ceepak closes his eyes for half a second. “Yes, sir. He has hoisted Dr. Rosen, without seat restraints, up to the peak of the 140-foot tower.”

“What does he want? Has your father made any demands?”

“We have not yet made contact.”

“Can you do so safely?” asks the Chief.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do it. Buy me some time. It’ll take a while for the tactical intervention team to arrive on scene-even if they chopper down.”

“Roger that. Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“You may also want to grab the M-24 SWS out of the armory.”

The SWS is a “Sniper Weapon System” rifle that Ceepak’s first boss in Sea Haven, his old Army buddy, Chief Cosgrove, obtained for the SHPD.

I think Ceepak is contemplating using it on his old man.

“What’re we doing with that kind of firepower in our arsenal?” asks Chief Rossi.

“Long story,” says Ceepak. “However, it might be of use if we enter a worst-case scenario. Over.”

Ceepak clips his radio back on his belt.

“Cover me, Danny.”

I rip up the Velcro flap on my holster and pull out my Glock. It’s a 31.357, the official SHPD service weapon. Catalog copy says the semi-automatic has “extremely high muzzle velocity and superior precision, even at medium range.”

Twenty feet to where Mr. Ceepak’s sitting in his control booth with the viewing window wide open? That’s medium range.

I rise up out of my crouch and lean across the countertop to brace myself in a two-handed firing stance. Sighting down the barrel, I have a clean shot at Crazy Joe.